


Tainted Love

by lowlights



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Cheating, Enemies With Benefits, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Hate Sex, Jealousy, Like EXTREMELY toxic, Post-Canon, Repressed Feelings, Slow Burn Emotions-Wise, Unrequited Love, consider yourself warned, ish, toxic draco
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:22:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 144,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27620642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowlights/pseuds/lowlights
Summary: Seven years post-war, Iris Knightley is transferred from MACUSA to the British Ministry of Magic to work as an Unspeakable in the Love Chamber. Everyone she meets seems to have some sort of warning for her against her new partner, Draco Malfoy. A former Death Eater and current alchemist, he's the most arrogant man she's ever met. Unfortunately, he also happens to be incredibly attractive. But that's just the Amortentia talking. Right?Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson have been together longer than he can remember. No matter how many engagements she goes through or how many random girls he tosses aside, they both know that they're meant for each other. Iris is just a distraction, a plaything. So why do her eyes keep catching him off guard?
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 171
Kudos: 288





	1. PART ONE: The Love Chamber

**Author's Note:**

> updates mondays and thursdays!
> 
> also, there is (or will be) explicit sexual content in this fic. I don't tag it at the beginning of chapters, so consider this a blanket warning! I will tag other potential triggers as always <3
> 
> hope you enjoy!

**PART ONE: THE LOVE CHAMBER**

_IRIS_

Iris Knightley walked through the streets of London with confidence - or at least as much confidence as someone with only a loose idea of where they were going could have. 

She had been told by everyone she knew that England would be gloomy, full of clouds and fog and rain, but the sky above her was bright blue, and a couple children ran around in a park next to the road. 

She was feeling optimistic for the first time in a while. 

As of late, her job as a Potioneer at MACUSA had become more of an arduous routine than the labor of love that it used to be. The only bright spot in her day was Sadie and Simon, little stolen moments in the hallways and lunches that lasted just a little too long. And even then, the two of them had each other. They didn’t need her around like she needed them. 

So when she was called into Graves’s office at the end of the day on what was otherwise a particularly pleasant Thursday and told that the department was transferring her to work in the British Ministry of Magic, it had felt as though her world was crashing down on her. 

How she had been selected for the job remained a mystery - Iris wasn't even sure exactly what the job _was_. Apparently she would be working under Minister Shacklebolt in the Department of Mysteries, which she supposed explained the _mystery_ of the whole thing. 

Apparently, it was either go to London or lose her job in the United States, which was about all she had going for her at the moment. 

Simon and Sadie had been all for it. Simon’s family was originally from France - he had gone to Beauxbatons instead of Ilvermorny like Iris and Sadie had. He raved about how much fun she would have, how the job must be extremely important and equally as interesting if it was in the Department of Mysteries. 

Sadie’s focus had been less on the job and more on the potential for Iris to meet a British boy, which had caused a bit of an argument between her and Simon.

Besides, it would only be a year, anyways. She had arrived yesterday, June first, and by next June first she would be crossing the ocean by MACUSA’s extra-strength Portkeys once again. 

Even in the excitement of packing up, Sadie and Simon helping her label boxes and sort through all her robes, a little bit of nervousness had tainted Iris’s perception of the situation. 

What if she didn’t meet friends like she had at home? What if everyone there was horrible? What if she hated the job, what if her coworkers were dull, what if her coworkers were incredible and she never wanted to leave?

But the fierce blue of the sky and the light breeze winding its way through the buildings around her now imbued Iris with a sense of purpose, a drive. She would make the most of it, take it for what it was, excel in her craft and return to America happier, more fulfilled… and maybe with a boy in tow. She’d be lying if the thought hadn’t crossed her mind a couple of times - how could it not when Sadie brought it up at every chance she got?

Iris stared up at a street sign, trying to remember the precise instructions she had been given by the Ministry pamphlet. She peered around the corner, relief flooding her when she recognized the bright red phone booth. 

She ducked inside, smoothing down her hair a little bit, trying to catch all the flyaways that the breeze had blown away from her face. She was sure her cheeks were flushed, stained with the excitement of a new beginning and the slight sting in the air. 

She pulled out her wand, tapping one of the rungs in front of her. For a second, nothing happened, and she thought she must have read the pamphlet wrong, but then a clear voice rang out through the booth. 

“The Ministry of Magic welcomes you. Please select a floor.”

The keypad lit up in front of her, and Iris pressed the ‘1’ button. 

“Please hold,” the phone booth said, then there was a curious sucking sensation and Iris felt almost as though she was falling into a vacuum. 

Then, all at once, she was standing in a little glass cubicle in the lobby of the Ministry of Magic. All around her, people spilled out onto the black tiled floor, and she followed suit. The ceiling sprawled high above her, columns stretching out towards each other and joining at its apex. 

Statues of men and women she didn’t recognize swayed slightly as they read, swiveling around to watch the witches and wizards pouring in from fireplaces and glass cubicles. 

Iris stepped off to the side, watching the organized chaos for a couple seconds before resolving herself to the task of finding the Ministry representative who was supposed to greet her.

A couple Ministry reps lined the wall near the fireplaces, their name tags magically enlarged and projected in the air above them so that they would be easy to identify.

 _Dean Thomas,_ one read. Another read _Angelica Brown._

Finally, as Iris looked over towards the elevators, she found the one she was looking for. _Hermione Granger._ Iris smiled - she looked nice, pretty, a small nose and big hair. Iris moved towards her, traversing the throngs of people as best she could.

When she reached Hermione, she was already holding her hand out to greet her. Iris took it immediately, shaking. 

“You must be Ms. Knightley?” Hermione asked brightly. Iris wondered how she could be so chipper when she was being forced to act as a glorified tour guide, but she supposed it was just part of the job. 

“Yes,” Iris said, “Nice to meet you.”

Hermione smiled. “I’m Hermione Granger,” she returned, waving her wand so that her projected name tag disappeared from the sky, “Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

Iris nodded, still smiling. She had no idea what that meant, but it sounded quite high up. She would ask Simon about it later - he had gone to Hogwarts on exchange in his fourth year for the infamous Triwizard Tournament, maybe he would know something about her. 

“Right then, follow me,” Hermione said, turning around and walking off with a purpose. Iris snapped into action immediately, not wanting to lose her guide in the somehow ever-growing crowd that was also swarming towards the elevators. 

Hermione walked over to the side, though, choosing a lift that nobody else was using. 

“Not just anyone can access the Department of Mysteries,” she said by way of explanation, tapping the handle of the bars and murmuring something under her breath. 

The bars bent to the side, and Hermione stepped in, Iris following just behind her. When the bars shut, Hermione turned to Iris. The lift started moving backwards before lurching to an unsteady stop and then beginning to climb upwards. 

“There’s a password, changes every week. Your… partner will tell you all about it,” Hermione said, pausing a little bit on the word _partner._ Learning that she would have a partner was the most Iris knew about the job, in all honesty. 

“Right. And what exactly…” Iris started, not wanting to sound ignorant but also wanting to learn as much about her job as she could before she had to start working, “What exactly does my job entail?”

Hermione laughed. It was a nice laugh, light and inoffensive. 

“Well, I’m afraid I don’t know myself. Department of Mysteries is Level 17 security clearance, you see - the only people other than Unspeakables who know what exactly their work entails is the Minister himself.”

“Oh,” Iris said. 

“I do know one thing, though,” Hermione said, shooting her a reassuring smile. Iris decided at once that she liked her. “You’ll be working in the Love Chamber.”

The lift lurched to another stop, and the bars bent back again. The same voice that had spoken in the phone booth sounding again, announcing their arrival. 

“Level nine,” it lilted, “Department of Mysteries.”

The room was best described as a sort of cavern. The ceilings were as high as the ones in the lobby had been, but the obsidian walls weren’t broken up by tiles or obscured by paintings and statues. Instead, 6 doorways had been carved into the wall. 

“There’s six divisions of the Department,” Hermione explained as she stepped onto the shining black floor. “The Brain Room, the Time Room, the Space Chamber, the Hall of Prophecies…” she gestured at the large door directly across from them, “The Death Chamber, and, of course, The Love Chamber.”

Iris nodded, all the names Hermione had just given her already getting muddled in her mind as she tried to keep them straight. 

Hermione set off, walking towards a door on the far right of the room. It was narrower than the rest of the doors, but slightly taller. 

She paused in the doorway, turning to Iris. 

“Listen, this may be a bit unprofessional, but I think you should know,” she started, turning towards Iris. “Your partner… well, he’s an excellent Potioneer of course, that’s why he’s been hired… he’s already made great strides… but, well, he can be a bit _abrasive.”_

“Abrasive?” Iris asked, her optimism about her first day fading slightly. If Hermione felt the need to warn her about someone, they must be something a bit more than abrasive. 

Hermione grimaced a little bit, tilting her head. 

“He can be a little cold. And blunt. But it’s nothing you can’t handle, really,” she assured, shaking her head slightly to emphasize her point. She cocked her head, taking in Iris’s unsure expression. “Maybe it wasn't worth telling you. He’ll probably be perfectly polite.”

Iris smiled to diffuse the tension, and Hermione smiled back, then turned and tapped her wand on the door handle. 

It swung open at once, leading into a room that looked eerily similar to the one she had just come from. 

“There’s an entrance hall in every chamber,” Hermione explained, “So that Ministry officials can come in without seeing what’s actually happening in the room itself. Level 17 security clearance and all.”

But Iris wasn't paying attention to Hermione’s words. 

Standing at the end of the entrance hall, leaning against the wall slightly, was one of the most attractive men she had ever seen. 

His robes looked like they had been steamed and pressed that morning, custom fit to his body, emphasizing his broad shoulders and spilling languidly down his body. The low light of the hallway caught their velvety sheen as he shifted slightly. 

His face was all angles - high cheekbones, a sharp jaw - and his hair was a particular shade of blond that Iris wasn't sure she had ever seen before. Almost silvery. It matched his eyes a little bit. 

He appeared to be, in a word, bored. He pushed off the wall slightly as Hermione and Iris walked in. Not bothering to smile or extend his hand, he gave Iris the once-over, his eyes flicking up and down her body unsubtly, coming to rest on her eyes for half a second, then turning to Hermione. 

“Malfoy, this is your new partner, Iris Knightley. Iris, this is Draco Malfoy.” Hermione said. 

“Hi,” Iris said. Draco raised his eyebrows, his gaze shifting back to her once again. 

“She’s American?” He asked, an unmistakable tone of repugnance staining his voice.

“On transfer from MACUSA until next June,” Hermione explained, “She came highly recommended from their Head of Potions.”

Iris found herself secretly surprised that Graves had recommended her for the job - she had been operating under the impression that he had sent her not because he thought she would be good, but because she was expendable. 

Draco did not seem to find the recommendation quite as satisfying, though perhaps just as surprising. 

“Oh, excellent, another American recommended her. Was there nobody willing to work here in the entire country?” He said, sneering. Unfortunately, he still looked quite attractive with his face turned up. 

“Old prejudices die hard, Malfoy,” Hermione said steadily. 

Draco regarded her. “I suppose you’re proof of that,” he said. His tone wasn't exactly bitter, though, it was more firm. As if he was recognizing that what Hermione said was true. 

There was a brief moment of silence. Draco seemed to almost revel in the bit of awkwardness, enjoying the fact that Iris was slightly uncomfortable. 

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Hermione said, “Iris, come find me if you need me. Third floor, Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

She patted Iris on the shoulder lightly, then turned and left. 

Draco kept eye contact with Iris for what felt like the longest second in the world, then let his eyes fall down her body and rake up it again. A slightly longer and more obvious sweep than the one he had given her earlier. 

“I hope you won’t cause me any trouble,” he said, his voice completely devoid of all emotion. He was quickly proving Hermione’s assurances about him _probably being perfectly polite_ wrong. “I’m used to working alone.”

“What exactly… will we be doing?” Iris asked.

He scoffed, not deigning to answer her question. He turned to the door at the end of the room, the one that supposedly led into the Love Chamber (though Iris wouldn’t be surprised if it led into another hallway).

He took out his wand, tapped the door handle. When it swung open, light poured into the hallway. 

The room beyond was so gorgeous that Iris couldn’t help but draw near to it at once. As soon as she stepped through the doorway, she felt as though she was coming home, as though she could stay in this room forever and want for nothing else. 

It was a giant room, bigger than Ilvermorny’s Great Hall had been. Huge windows lined each wall, sunlight pouring through. They didn’t look out onto the streets of London, though - they looked out on a field of wildflowers, mountains rising in the background, snowcapped even though it was summer. 

A light breeze rustled the grass, and a bird flew by, but Iris’s eyes were quickly drawn to rest of the room. 

The floor, instead of the shining obsidian that decorated the rest of the Ministry, was a bright white marble. In the middle of the room sat a tall fountain with a gold base. Instead of water, though, a pearly sort of liquid flowed through it, changing color as the light hit it. 

Iris recognized it as Amortentia at once. She had smelled the same thing in it since they had first been introduced to it her fourth year at Ilvermorny - fresh linen, roses, and rain. Her eyes lingered on the fountain for a while.

But the rest of the room had its own draws. 

Potions bubbled around the room in crystal cauldrons, every color of the rainbow and then some. Vines slowly climbed up the walls - the ones closest to the fountain were blooming pale pink flowers that slowly shed their petals, which dissolved into light in the air. 

The room was also home to a collection of glass display cases, two of which seemed to be holding beating human hearts, the rest of which were filled with old artifacts - a deep purple gemstone, a silver chain necklace, an ornate mirror, a piece of blank parchment. 

The walls and ceiling were decorated with portraits of couples. One depicted a man slowly reaching out towards a woman’s hand, her face twisting into a smile. Another showed a woman crying fat crystal tears as another woman turned away from her. There was a marriage ceremony, a couple joining hands as a strand of golden light wrapped itself around their wrists. The one in the middle of the ceiling was particularly provocative - the woman kept having to readjust her shawl so as not to flash the room. 

A giant floor mirror stood in an alcove on the side of the room. It looked ancient and beautiful. Iris could just about make out a carving on its side that said something that looked like _“E R I S E D”_

“Only two people are allowed to work in here at any one time,” Draco’s voice said, breaking Iris from her stupor. She turned to him, thankful that he was actually explaining something to her. “Otherwise, the tensions run too high.”

“I thought you said you were used to working alone?” Iris asked. 

Draco sneered. “I’ve been working alone since my last partner left. It’s been two months. I don’t need you, Granger and Shacklebolt just couldn’t stand breaking protocol.”

“What happened to your last partner?” Iris asked, feeling as though that was something she should probably know. 

“He quit,” Draco returned, “And so did the two before that. Don’t make yourself comfortable.”

Iris felt a little flick of annoyance in her chest. Was that a threat? Had he done something to make his past partners quit just so he could work alone? Well, she wouldn’t be game to that. She needed this job to keep her job at MACUSA. And if she could stand third-wheeling Sadie and Simon for the past four years, she could put up with Draco’s rudeness for one. 

Her eyes roamed back over the room, taking it in again. She watched the petals fall, taking a step towards the fountain so that she could better smell the Amortentia inside it. It was so fresh, so nice. It reminded her of home. 

_“Naris Oppilo,”_ Draco said lazily, and all at once Iris could no longer smell the Amortentia. She supposed he had performed some sort of nose-blocking charm on her.

She turned to him as he dropped his wand back to his side, confirming her theory.

“Easily distracted,” he said languidly, “But I suppose most Americans are.”

Iris felt a bit annoyed, but she couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t needed the spell. With the Amortentia no longer clouding her head and the love magic of the room no longer entrancing her, she could get to work with a clear mind. 

If only she had any idea what _work_ entailed. 

She looked around the room, taking in the potions on the walls and the tables to see if she could recognize any of them. The crystal cauldrons made it easier - she could see the colors, sheens, and consistencies of almost all of them through the glass. 

“Aging Potion,” she identified easily, talking to herself under her breath as she gestured at a cauldron near the door, “Invigoration Potion, Moonbeam Draught, Aureus Healing Salve… Strengthening Solution…”

Draco chuckled from next to her. “Are you that desperate to prove yourself, Knightley? A fourth year could recognize those potions.”

“Well, you haven’t exactly given me anything else to do,” Iris said back, her annoyance with him growing as he continued to make snide comments. Hermione was wrong - he wasn't _cold,_ he was just an asshole.

“It’s not my job to give you things to do. If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be here at all.”

“Well, fine then. I’ll stay out of your way,” Iris said, bristling a little bit, “But seeing as you’re the only one besides the Minister of Magic who knows what I’m supposed to be doing in here, I can’t exactly do so until you tell me.”

Draco regarded her curiously for a second, but it quickly gave way to disdain. Iris supposed she would have to get used to that look on his face if they were going to be partners for the next year.

“Our job is everything that the Minister deems to be related to love,” Draco said, saying the word love in the same way that a muggle would say the word _wizard_ or _unicorn._

“Which is?” Iris prompted. 

“Mostly testing and creating potions - making stronger versions of Amortentia and diluting it, taking that shit they sell in Knockturn Alley and studying its effects. Sometimes studying the artifacts,” Draco gestured at the glass display cases.

He looked back at Iris for a beat, then walked over to a table in the center of the room that was holding a simmering potion, the same deep purple color as the gemstone but with a metallic edge to it. 

Iris followed him, going around the table and standing on the other side. 

“What’s that?” She asked. 

Draco looked up. “Merlin, are you always such a hindrance?” He asked, but continued talking after he looked back down at it. “It’s a cousin of Amortentia being sold on the black market. It doesn’t create desire, just sort of a heightened susceptibility with long-lasting effects.”

“Long-lasting?”

“The dealers say it’s supposed to last a month.”

“A month?”

“Are you just going to repeat the end of my sentences? Yes, a month. It’s my job to figure out whether or not that’s true.”

“ _Our_ job,” Iris said under her breath. Draco glared, taking a couple little glass vials from the side of the table and meticulously measuring out parts of the potion into them. 

She noticed that there was a small pile of rings at the other edge of the table - big silver things that would definitely mess up the composition of a potion. Her eyes flicked back to his fingers, picturing how they would look on him. 

She shook her head, snapping herself out of it. Standing in front of a table and watching Draco do all the work would just be proving him right. And it would feel very, very good to prove him wrong. 

“What should I do?” She asked.

Draco didn’t even look up as he responded. “Can’t say I care. I’m not here to hold your hand.”

At the word _hand,_ Iris’s thoughts returned briefly to his rings, but she shook herself out of it again. If he wasn't going to help her, she would prove that she didn’t need his help.

She stared at the potion for a minute, thinking about the best way to figure out its effects. If she only knew the ingredients, she might know how they’d react… but there was no way a potion from the black market came with a list of ingredients. 

She bent over slightly, regarding the potion closer. The metallic sheen was an interesting shade, shimmering almost green atop the purple. She knew that shade - it came from Aconite fluid. 

And the way it was bubbling even though it wasn't over heat… maybe it was dragon scales, but collecting scales had been banned decades ago, and dragon scales would have given the potion a much thicker consistency than it had. So it couldn’t be dragons.

Iris looked up, scanning the room for any ingredient stores. There was a cabinet at the side of the room, and she walked towards it at once, opening it up to find that it was indeed full of bottles, jars, and charmed boxes holding ingredients. 

She grabbed a bottle of Aconite fluid, looking next to it to see - why didn’t she think of it earlier? Ashwinder eggs, hatched in fire. They would heat any potion up. She grabbed the box full of them, scanning the cabinet to figure out what other ingredients she would need. 

The base of the potion, from what she could tell, was definitely water - it was a thin mixture. But where was the purple coming from… maybe pearl dust? She couldn’t see that causing heightened susceptibility to anything. 

Her eyes passed over the shelves, squinting to read some of the older labels, until her eyes fell on exactly what she needed. Lionfish venom - known to put the consumer in a coma. It was bright purple, and if used in a small enough dose… yes, it could definitely make someone more susceptible, _especially_ when combined with the bit of adrenaline that Aconite fluid could give to a potion. 

Ingredients in hand, Iris closed the cabinet. She shot a look at Draco to see if he was looking at her, but he was still bent over the cauldron. He had measured out a couple jars of it now, and was furiously scribbling notes. 

Whatever. She shouldn’t be worrying about him, anyways. If he could work alone, she could too. 

She took an empty cauldron, setting her ingredients out in front of her, and cast _Aguamenti_ nonverbally to fill the cauldron up. The Ashwinder eggs went in first, and as soon as their yolk mixed with the water, it began to simmer. 

Next was the Lionfish venom - if Iris was right, it would need time to somewhat dissolve in the water so as not to put its drinker to sleep immediately. For some reason, it was in powder form instead of liquid, and the potion didn’t turn the exact shade of purple that she wanted it to, but it was close enough.

She guessed it would need to rest for at least an hour to completely dissolve, so she stirred it a couple of times, then put the spoon down. 

She wasted at least ten minutes watching the petals falling from the ceiling on top of the Amortentia fountain, wondering what charm was on them that made them melt into little patches of light before fading entirely. 

Then she wandered around for a while, staring at the portraits. They seemed to find it a bit rude that she was staring at them, though, especially the ones who were flirting with each other. So instead she looked out the window, watching a little swallow at the edge of the field darting through the air. 

Eventually, she remembered the mirror she had seen when she first walked in, and she turned to make her way towards the alcove it was housed in. 

But before she could, Draco’s voice sounded through the room. “Don’t go over there,” he said. After at least an hour of dead silence between them, the sound startled her. 

She turned around, confused as to how Draco had seen what she was doing. He was still bent over the parchment he had been scribbling on. It was almost as if he hadn’t spoken in the first place. But he definitely had. 

“Why not?” Iris asked.

“We aren’t supposed to look in the mirror,” he answered noncommittally. “Shows you the thing you most desire. Two people before me had to be fired because they were looking into it instead of working.”

“Doesn’t seem that dangerous,” Iris said. She thought it would be quite interesting, actually, to see what she most desired. She wasn't sure what it would be. 

“They were fired, then they were institutionalized. They went crazy, stopped eating so that they could stare at it all day,” Draco said, looking up at Iris for the first time since she had been watching him measure out the potions. “But go on. I don’t give a fuck if you drop off. You go mad, I get to work alone.”

Iris bristled at that, and decided that looking in the mirror wasn't worth it. On the off chance that he was right. 

She watched him for a little while as he continued measuring out parts of the potion, holding the vials up to the light and scrutinizing them, then making more notes on the parchment in front of him. Iris wondered how on earth he was gleaning that much information from looking at glass bottles, but she supposed he must know what he was doing. 

She figured it had been enough time that she could add the Aconite fluid into her potion, and she was pleased to see that it darkened the purple slightly as well as adding the exact metallic sheen that she needed. The consistency still felt a bit off, but it wasn't bad for a first attempt. 

She bent over, looking at the mixture. Yes, it was definitely missing something that would give it a slightly thicker consistency and maybe darken the purple a little more. She got up, intending to go over to the ingredient cabinet and search through it, but Draco’s voice broke her concentration yet again. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” He asked, and Iris turned to see that, this time, he was facing her. 

She felt a bit triumphant as she gestured to the cauldron beside her. “Replicating the potion so that we know what ingredients are in it,” she said, unable to read his expression in response, “I’ve just about managed it, I just need one more thing.”

Draco’s face twisted a little bit, and for a fraction of a second, Iris allowed herself to think that he might be about to congratulate her, recognize that she could hold her own… at least ask to see what she had done. 

Then he spoke. “Merlin, you’re fucking useless,” he growled, and Iris raised her eyebrows. 

“Well, if we know what ingredients -” she started, but he cut her off. 

“I already know what ingredients are in it. Who the fuck do you think _made_ this batch of it?”

Iris blanched. He had made it already? “I thought you said it was being sold on the black market…” She trailed off, connecting the dots before he even spoke. 

“Yeah, it was. I got a vial of it and replicated it. Same way you just tried to do, only mine _worked._ ”

“You could’ve told me -”

“Anyone with a single ounce of intelligence could have told you. Did you think the Ministry bought out the Knockturn Alley black market and nobody fucking noticed? Fuck me, this is why I like to work alone.”

He regarded Iris with disgust for a second, then turned around, taking one of his vials across the room to the glass display cases. Iris lingered by the table he had vacated, annoyance burning in her chest. 

If he had just _spoken_ to her, she could’ve helped him do whatever he was doing. 

She took a couple of quick steps towards the table, eyeing the parchment he had been scribbling on all morning. Though perhaps scribbling was the wrong word - his handwriting was nice, elegant with a sort of sharpness to it. 

Maybe if she could read what he had written, she would be able to figure out what exactly he was doing and, in turn, what she was supposed to be doing. 

She made out a couple of words - ‘properties,’ ‘oil,’ and ‘heat’ - before his voice snapped her back to attention. 

“Are you reading my notes?” He asked, his tone absolutely icy. Maybe Hermione hadn’t completely missed the mark when she called him _cold._

“I didn’t mean to…” Iris trailed off, feeling her cheeks heat up. She dug her nails into her palm, trying to combat her blush. 

“You know, I thought Rosier was the worst they could give me,” he said, “I was wrong. At least he left me well alone. Go on, go back to working on your third-year grade potion, see if you can get it right. If that's all you're good for.”

With that, he turned around, opening up one of the display cases that had a human heart enclosed in it. 

The hot blush spread across Iris’s cheeks, and she turned around as her nose stung, threatening her eyes with tears of frustration. It was her first day ever working here, he had explained barely anything to her, and yet he expected her to know what to do on pure instinct and do it without interacting with him at all. 

_If that's all you’re good for._

She stayed facing the far wall until the tears had receded back into her head, then turned and grabbed one of the vials he had poured, determined to figure something out about the potion. If only to prove him wrong about her. 

She uncorked it, and a little wisp of smoke curled out from the top. Interesting. She wondered what property it had that made it do that - maybe the Ashwinder eggs reacting with the powdered form of the venom?

The sound of the door opening and closing punctured the silence, and Iris turned around to see that Draco was no longer in the room. Leave it to him to come and go as he pleased. 

She turned back to the potion, wondering if there were any direct-contact effects. She supposed the best way to figure it out was just by trying it, so she poured a bit of the potion onto the back of her hand. 

For about a minute, nothing happened, then it started to burn. Shit. Maybe it was a mistake to put a mixture containing Lionfish venom directly onto her skin. 

She looked around the room for a sink, eyes falling on a little marble feature near the door that was spitting water. She rushed over to it, getting the potion off her hand and looking at the skin underneath it. 

It seemed fine, just a little red. She was in the middle of wondering whether or not the heightened susceptibility that the potion caused also set in late when she heard Draco’s voice. 

Instead of cutting through the air, rude and unfeeling, his tone sounded almost… intimate. 

“Been a while,” he said softly, then laughed a little. Iris’s eyes widened. She couldn’t really picture Draco laughing.

He spoke again. “Tell them I say hello… Or you could just skip it?”

Iris stood up, knocking her hand into the faucet accidentally. She couldn’t make out whatever Draco said next, and realized too late that he had hung up. The door opened, and he swept through it, taking her in with his regular flair of disdain. 

“Eavesdropping, are we?” He drawled, his eyes flashing with a bit of anger. 

“No!” Iris said at once, “I was just washing my hands.”

Draco’s gaze dragged down to her hands, which were indeed wet. 

“What for?”

“I… just wanted to see what the direct-contact effects of the potion were.”

“Fuck, you really are dense,” he said, then turned and walked away. 

Thankfully, the end of the day came not too long after. Draco was off without so much as a glance, casting a quick spell to store his precious vials and fold up his piece of parchment. 

Iris was a bit slower with her cleanup, not sure where everything went yet. She drained the potion she had been working on, annoyed that she had spent so much time on it and it had ended up being virtually worthless. 

By the time she entered the hallway outside, she guessed everyone else would’ve left already, but there were still three people standing in the Department of Mysteries’ atrium. 

A witch wearing dark green robes, her long, dark hair pulled into a high ponytail, leaned against a wall next to the biggest door in the room - the Hall of Prophecies, Iris remembered. 

In front of her stood a tall wizard with a head full of shaggy, curly blonde hair, a relaxed posture and a crooked grin on his face. And next to him, there was a brunette boy sporting a nicely cropped hairdo, his deep black robes looking almost as perfectly tailored as Draco’s. 

The girl caught Iris staring, and Iris would have averted her eyes if the girl’s eyes hadn’t lit up in response. 

“Oi, Sebastian,” she said, grinning, “Guess who?”

The blonde boy turned around, his crooked smile widening as he caught sight of Iris. He turned and started walking towards her, the other boy and the girl in tow. 

“Hello,” he said, extending his hand to her, “I’m Sebastian.”

The brown-haired boy smiled languidly, holding his hand out once Iris was done shaking Sebastian’s. “I’m Theodore,” he said in a perfectly clipped accent, “Theodore Nott.”

“Introducing ourselves by last name now, are we?” Sebastian asked, and Theodore rolled his eyes at him. 

The girl laughed. “Ignore them. I’m Tracey. And I don’t believe either of them actually asked for your name?”

Iris smiled, holding out her hand. “I’m Iris.”

“She’s American!” Sebastian exclaimed, earning an eyeroll from both Tracey and Theodore. 

“Is that going to put you off her?” Theodore asked, and Sebastian cocked his head, grinning. 

“Boys, please,” Tracey said, “Sebastian saw you and Granger walking in this morning. First day?”

“Yeah. Do you all work in the Department of Mysteries too?”

“Couldn’t get up here otherwise. Sebastian and I work in the Hall of Prophecies. Theo works in the Death Chamber.”

“Yeah, he’s a right dark bloke,” Sebastian said just as Theodore said, “Tracey, I told you, you can’t call me _Theo._ It’s Theo _dore._ ”

“You’re Love Chamber, right?” Tracey asked, and Iris nodded. 

“I would ask you what you do in there, but I suppose you’re under as strict a secrecy as we are,” Sebastian said, and Tracey shot him a grin. 

“Oh, please, Sebastian, you’ve told Theodore everything you’ve ever done,” she said, turning her smile back on Iris and shaking her head slightly, as if they were sharing a little joke. Iris felt more at home among the three of them than she had in the entire time she’d been in the country. 

“Anyways,” Tracey said, “We usually go grab a pint after work. Want to come with?”

Iris smiled. “I’d love to, yeah.”

Tracey smiled back, then turned to Theodore and Sebastian with a reproachful gaze. “Right, boys, and neither of you are allowed to monopolize the conversation like usual.”

Theodore and Sebastian spoke at the same time again: “I don’t monopolize the conversation!” And “Sebastian’s the one monopolizing conversations, not me!” 

The group reminded Iris a little bit of what hanging out with Simon and Sadie at home was like. Tracey grabbed Iris’s hand, walking with her towards the elevator as Sebastian and Theodore play fought behind her. 

“Careful, not my hair!” Theodore shouted, and Tracey laughed lightly, fixing Iris with another conspiratorial glance. 

“It’ll be nice to have another girl around for once,” she confided. 

Iris smiled, all her latent anger about Draco dissipating as she stepped into the lift.


	2. The Trouble with Pansy

_DRACO_

Draco had always preferred walking home after work. He usually left just as the sun was fading away from the horizon, the sky darkening to a sort of grey and then a complete black. It was an excellent way to collect his thoughts. 

Ever since he had moved out of the Manor (too many memories, and he lived them enough in his nightmares to have to experience them in real life) and to an apartment on the nice end of Diagon, he found it better to walk, to feel the sting of the air on his skin. If nothing else, watching people move out of his way as he made his way down the sidewalk was satisfying. 

His name might still be synonymous with that of the deposed Dark Lord, but people still found his presence powerful enough to step aside for him. 

Usually, he took the time to think through complex potions issues or the properties of whatever artifact the Ministry had recovered and passed along to him to study.

Today, though, he was thinking about Iris Knightley. And how fucking infuriating she was. 

He wasn't lying when he said he preferred to work alone. The last two months had been some of the most productive of his life - he no longer had to compare notes with anybody, no longer had to keep tabs on another person as he went about his work. 

So when Minister Shacklebolt had informed him that he would be getting a new partner by the beginning of June, he dreaded the thought. 

And once he learned that it would be a girl, he found himself dreading it even more. 

His three previous partners had all been men, and though they were utterly incompetent compared to him, he never had to worry about them wandering over to the Mirror of Erised just to have a look. It seemed to Draco that girls shouldn’t have access to the Love Chamber at all - they were too prone to fantasies of romance. 

Iris had proven that within five minutes of entering the room. She was drawn to the Amortentia fountain as if she was being pulled on a string. 

He wondered what she had smelled - no, he didn’t. Probably something like candy, a bouquet of flowers, chocolate… clichéd things that teenagers believe symbolize love. 

Even though he used the nose-blocking spell every day to focus more easily on his work, Draco knew exactly what the fountain would smell like to him if he didn’t. It had smelled the same since that first day in sixth year that Slughorn had unveiled it. 

And therein, perhaps, lay the real problem with Iris - with women in general. Draco would forever compare every girl in his life to the one he had been with since he was thirteen years old. 

His Amortentia smelled like black coffee, peppermint, and Pansy Parkinson’s perfume. 

And nobody was anything special compared to Pansy, least of all Iris. 

He swung the door open, letting it bounce on its hinges before kicking it closed behind him. He shrugged his coat off, turning to put it on the hanger. Then he saw them. 

Sitting right next to the door. A pair of red heels. 

He chuckled to himself, turning into the apartment. Fuck, she was perfect. He had made a single throwaway comment to her on the phone about fucking off dinner at her parents’ house, and she had done it. 

He walked from the entrance hall into the large living room of his apartment. Pansy was draped across the couch, her coat hanging from its arm. She was clearly dressed up to go somewhere, wearing a long black dress that accentuated every part of her perfect body. 

He let his eyes wander over her freely as she sat up slightly, her hair spilling over her shoulders. 

“You kept me waiting,” she said, her voice low and gravelly.

“I wasn't expecting you,” he returned, eyes boring into hers as she made a show of standing up from the couch and readjusting her dress. 

She took a couple of steps towards Draco until she was standing right in front of him. 

“Well, some of those parties get awfully boring, just thinking about you,” she said quietly, then, before he could even respond, she turned and walked down the hallway, pausing in his doorway and looking back at him over her shoulder. Her bare feet made no sound on the floor, the makeup still on her face from wherever she had been before this making her eyes look darker, more mysterious. 

There was nothing that could ever hope to compare to this. 

She was already out of her dress by the time Draco walked into his room, sitting on the edge of his bed and staring up at him, a challenge in her gaze. 

Their bodies moved together with practiced ease, his hands tight on her waist, her nails digging little crescents into his shoulders. He leaned into her neck, but she pushed him off. 

“No, no marks,” she said softly, and Draco complied, returning his lips to hers. He forgot, sometimes, that she wasn't his. He was her secret, the part of her heart that the rest of the world could never know about. 

But she made up for it in other ways. 

Afterward, Draco propped himself up on his headboard, blankets curling over his body, placidly watching as Pansy stood in front of the floor mirror in the corner of his room, smoothing her dress back onto her body and stepping back into the bright red heels. 

Draco had never looked in the Mirror of Erised, but he supposed if he had, he would’ve seen something like this. 

Pansy had never been one to stay the night. _Imagine what the_ Prophet _would think if they caught me leaving your apartment,_ she would say, and it suited him just fine. 

He lay back even further in bed after she left, exhaling. He felt more peaceful, more satisfied, than he had been in a long time. It had been a while since he had had her, and she felt just as good as she always did. Even better, maybe. 

There would never be another person that would know him as well as Pansy did - in bed or otherwise. Even before Hogwarts, they had grown up together, both practicing their manners at dinner parties organized between the pureblood families of Britain. 

That stuff didn’t matter to him anymore - it had been a long time since he had truly cared about someone’s blood status. He supposed seeing your father being sent to Azkaban and being publicly condemned by every major wizarding news outlet made you rethink your old prejudices. 

In truth, he had been rethinking them since his sixth year at Hogwarts. It was as if his life fell into a ‘before’ and an ‘after.’ Before, he was confident, arrogant, assured in the superiority of his family and the weight of his world. After, he was a pawn in someone else’s game, sleeping in the same house as the Dark Lord, his presence hanging over every aspect of his life, watching his mother and father retreat into themselves, growing paler. 

Watching his father being tortured in the living room. Charity Burbage’s body hanging above the same dining room table where he and Pansy had once sat as nine-year-olds, working on their posture. No longer caring whether or not Voldemort won the war, just caring that he could make it out, live another day. Or not.

It had been almost a decade since the end of the war, and the _Prophet_ had (mostly) found other things to report on than the goings-on of former Death Eaters. 

But just when he thought the rest of the wizarding world might accept him, some scholarly journal would come out discussing the morality of allowing people like Draco to continue living a normal life after the atrocities that they had committed. Or a tabloid would release pictures of him walking around Diagon Alley. Or he would push his sleeve a little too far up his arm and someone would catch sight of the Dark Mark. 

He wanted to tell them that they were lucky that they could be disgusted with him. They were lucky that their families chose the right side. Did they truly believe that sixteen-year-old, cowardly, blindly loyal Draco Malfoy could have rebelled against one of the most powerful wizards of all time?

He didn't try to make excuses for what he had done, the old prejudices that he had kept. But the way the _Daily Prophet_ had it, Draco had been leading the charge, the Dark Lord’s right-hand man. Whatever sold them the most papers. 

For this reason, there had been a bit of public outrage when he had first gotten his job at the Ministry of Magic, especially because nobody knew exactly what work he was doing. He supposed his relatively cold and standoffish demeanour wasn't aiding his public image - but what did they expect him to do, start holding open doors for strangers?

Pansy was one of the only people who understood that, who understood him. She had stood by him even when he had felt his most isolated, his most alone. She had been by his side since they were eight, his girlfriend since they were thirteen. 

After the war, things had gotten more complicated. 

The Parkinsons hadn’t openly sided with Voldemort, so Pansy’s family was allowed to remain members of high society without causing a scandal. The Malfoys, on the other hand, were perhaps the family most publicly associated with the Dark Lord. 

Lucius had been sent to Azkaban, and Draco and Narcissa had been put on house arrest for two years. Living at the Manor and being forced to relive everything that had happened there seventh year was more punishment than the Wizengamot could imagine.

Even now, his mother still behaved as though she was on house arrest. Draco supposed that Narcissa found comfort in the old house that was so heavily associated with the husband she was only allowed to see four times a year. Old portraits of him kept her company. 

Pansy couldn’t exactly stay with Draco and expect to still have a good public image. As her parents’ only child, she was the face of the Parkinson family, so she was expected by everyone to marry a man of her status. 

And though Draco may still have had access to his family’s vaults, the Malfoy name simply did not ring the way it used to. 

It wasn't as though Pansy had just stopped seeing him, though. They had just had to keep it a secret. At first, they were together all the time, meeting up almost every night. As time went on and their lives got more complicated, though, every night became twice a week, then once a week, then once every couple of weeks. Then once a month. 

Pansy’s first engagement, to a Beauxbatons boy she had met on a trip abroad, had felt like a gut punch. Then she had shown up at Draco’s apartment and told him that nothing had changed, that it was just for her image, that she wanted to be with him and nobody else. 

And then she had called off her engagement at the last second. 

Three engagements in, Draco had learned to cope with it. Even when it meant that he got to see her less often, the sex was better when she felt guilty. She let him do more. 

And it wasn't as if he was celibate, either. Especially in those times when he couldn’t have Pansy that much, he was no stranger to the Leaky Cauldron or the White Horse. But no matter how many other girls he slept with, nobody would ever come close to Pansy. 

He pictured her while he was fucking them, anyways - her dark hair, dark eyes, the way her lips parted and her eyes fluttered shut as she gripped his bicep, her long nails digging into his skin, leaving little marks that he would run his thumb over in the shower…

And fuck, he needed a shower. 

The water flowed over his body, waking him up a little bit. He liked the water scalding hot, so hot it left his skin a little bit red. He dried his hair, then wrapped the towel around his waist. 

He stared at himself in the mirror for a second. He would be happy to spend the rest of his days like this. He’d never been one for _companionship._ A good hard fuck would do just fine. 

It would be nice to have Pansy whenever he wanted her, to know that she belonged to him and nobody else, but in truth, she already did. She whispered in his ear all the time that nobody could compare to him, that he would always be the one she wanted in the end. 

The moon hung overhead as Draco got into bed for the second time, drowsy now, not looking forward to having to go into work Monday. 

For a second, his thoughts turned back to Iris. 

She had been nothing short of exasperating, a thorn in his paw. But the fact that she had almost replicated the potion in two hours when it had taken him three days was… sort of impressive, honestly, even if it had turned out to be absolutely useless. 

Not that it mattered. He would so much rather be without her, so much rather work on his own. What he wouldn’t give for her to disappear - he found himself somewhat regretting warning her not to look in the Mirror. It would have been almost poetic for her to go mad staring at her own reflection on her first day. 

Though he supposed it might raise some eyebrows at the _Prophet_ if his new partner died within a day of meeting him. 

The fact that he was even giving her an inch of space in his thoughts was nonsensical. She had definitely been eavesdropping on his phone call with Pansy, though. 

He grinned at the thought. He was used to girls pining over him - they had been doing so since he was eleven in first-year. But somehow, thinking about Iris finding him attractive was even sweeter. 

Knowing that she fancied him a bit would make being an absolute dick to her even more fun than it already was. Not that he was doing it just to annoy her - everything he had said to her was absolutely on the mark. She _was_ useless, a hindrance to his work. 

The type of person he would have to keep his eyes on. Just to make sure she didn’t fuck anything up beyond repair.


	3. The Leaky Cauldron

_IRIS_

The Leaky Cauldron on a Friday night was truly a sight to behold. An old barman and a scantily clad girl stood behind the bar. Their wands flicked through the air with practiced haste, turning taps on and off, spilling liquids of all different colors into glass chalices and sending them flying across the counter. 

Booths lined the walls, and groups of wizards packed into them, yelling and laughing and sloshing their gold and purple drinks all over the floor, where the liquid glowed in little iridescent pools. The hardwood floor creaked and moaned and held everyone up.

Crowds of people milled around on the floor, most dancing, some swaying, others standing awkwardly off to the side. A couple of people pushed through the throng, shouting out their friends' names and trying to levitate their drinks well above the moving bodies. 

Hands reached towards the ceiling, which was decorated by little balls of light, twinkling gold and silver, drifting around and bumping into each other. They were timed to the music, strobing in time with some Weird Sisters hit from ten years ago. 

It felt special, like walking into a bubble. If Tracey wasn’t pulling Iris along the side of the dance floor, she would’ve stopped and stared for a while, watching people’s little worlds colliding with hers. 

But apparently, finding an empty booth on a Friday night was something of an anomaly, and Iris’s new acquaintances were making a beeline for the opportunity. 

Tracey pulled Iris into the booth after her, sighing in contentment and shooting her a smile. Theodore slid in across from them, and Sebastian took off his jacket, setting it down on the empty seat and turning towards the bar. 

“I’ll get us drinks!” He shot over his shoulder, and Theodore rolled his eyes theatrically. 

“We can order drinks from the table,” Theodore confided, his feigned annoyance giving way to a sort of brotherly fondness. “Sebastian’s just in love with the bartender.”

Iris turned to look at the bar. The older man tending it waved his wand, sending three golden chalices flying out over the crowd and into three pairs of outstretched hands at a booth in the corner. 

“Not Tom!” Tracey clarified, seeing Iris’s eye-line, “Diana. I think she’s part Veela.”

Iris chuckled as Sebastian wormed his way between two people sitting at the bar and flashed a smile at the female bartender. He took his time ordering, leaning languidly on the counter and throwing in some extra grins and a wink for good measure. 

Unfortunately, Diana did not seem to take notice - or, if she did, she didn’t care. Once Sebastian was done ordering, she simply nodded and turned around. He looked a bit put out, and Tracey giggled. 

“Poor man, he’s been throwing himself at her for years,” she said, voice rife with exaggerated pity. 

Theodore shook his head, making some sort of signal at Sebastian from across the bar. He looked back at Tracey and Iris and shrugged. 

“He’ll get over it as soon as he gets a drink in him.”

That, as it turned out, was true. Sebastian came back to the table with three drinks levitating around him and one held in his hand. 

For Theodore, a dark drink whose surface appeared to be on fire. For Tracey, a bright green drink that was sending up little tendrils of steam. For himself, a turquoise drink served in a little cauldron, into which he poured a notable amount of sugar. And for Iris, a lavender drink with a silver sheen that was swirling around by itself. 

“What is it?” She asked, looking down into the pearly concoction in front of her. 

“Unicorn blood,” Sebastian said casually, then upon seeing the horrified expression on Iris’s face, quickly added, “It’s not really! That’s just what they call it. What, you don’t have them in America?”

“No,” she confirmed, putting it to her lips and taking a small sip as everyone looked on. 

It was warm, but not in an unpleasant way, and she felt it trailing from her mouth to her stomach, the heat spreading through her body. It seemed to imbibe her with a bit more life, waking up the nerve endings on the tips of her fingers and the back of her neck. 

She grinned. 

Once everybody got a couple more drinks in them, the conversation flowed quickly from topic to topic, touching on Sebastian’s hopeless infatuation with Diana the bartender, Theodore’s dream from three nights ago, whether or not Tracey should buy the pink robes she saw at Madam Malkin’s, and what shops on Diagon they wanted to take Iris to. 

But as more rounds of drinks were ordered and the shallow little talks about dreams and clothes drew their final breaths, the conversation veered towards the three things that seemed to make up the modern wizard: work, school, and the war. 

Work came up first, as it was apt to do amongst a group of wizards who all worked at the same place. 

“I’ll tell you this,” Sebastian said, leaning over the table as if he was about to reveal a dark family secret, “Working at the Department of Mysteries has landed me countless dates. Women love mystery.”

“Is a one-night stand a date?” Tracey asked, eyebrows raised. 

Sebastian chuckled, leaning back towards his side of the booth and knocking into his drink. A couple of drops of the turquoise liquid spilled out onto the table and seared through the wood, which grew back in an instant. 

“Let me rephrase,” he said, spreading his arms wide and knocking the back of his hand into Theodore’s shoulder. “Working in the Department of Mysteries has increased my body count tenfold.” He turned to Theodore, a more serious expression on his face. “It could do the same for you, Theo, if only you knew how to slip it into conversations.”

“Enough with this _Theo_ nonsense,” Theodore replied, “It’s Theo _dore,_ and I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this.”

As the boys ventured their way into a playful argument, Tracey turned to Iris with a conspiratorial smile. 

“Let them carry on with each other; I’ll tell you everything you need to know,” Tracey said, then took a giant sip of her drink, screwed up her face, and set it back down on the table. 

“Go on,” Iris said, leaning her elbow on the table and putting her chin in her hands. 

Theodore and Sebastian provided a symphony of background noise as Tracey went through every division of the Department of Mysteries, assessing each employee and whether or not they had earned her stamp of approval. 

Michael Corner, who worked in the Brain Chamber, was attractive enough for Tracey to have been slightly in love with for a couple of months last year. Abigail Connelly was a stuck-up prat who badmouthed Sebastian in her end-of-year evaluation after he stopped calling her. Cecilia Bones was smart as a whip, but not very interesting. Jamie Anderson was quiet, but Tracey had hooked up with him at the Ministry’s annual Christmas party, and he was pretty loud then. 

Most of the names and anecdotes Tracey mentioned escaped Iris’s mind, but she figured she would see for herself in due time. Besides, she got the feeling that the three most exciting members of the Department of Mysteries staff were sitting right in front of her, and she felt a glow of luck as she took another sip of her drink. 

“And don’t even get me started on Draco Malfoy,” Tracey said, slamming her drink back onto the table and cocking her head. “Though I suppose I don’t have to tell you.”

Iris found herself suddenly interested in the conversation. If she would have to work with Draco Malfoy for the next year, she supposed she should get Tracey’s take on him. Especially if he was going to try to get her fired. 

“I don’t really know that much about him,” Iris said, shrugging, “besides that he seems like a huge asshole.”

“Well, I was two years younger than him in school,” Tracey said, “so I didn’t know much about him then, either. I was a Slytherin, though, so he never really bullied me.”

She turned to the boys, who had found their way from a shouting match to a physical fight of sorts. They had their hands locked on each other’s shoulders, both trying to drag the other’s head down to the table.

“Oi!” Tracey shouted. They both looked up, but kept their hands on each other. She raised her eyebrows and cleared her throat. They dropped it, looking equal parts sheepish and amused. 

“You two tell Iris about Draco. She has to work with him, you know, she needs information.”

“Ask Theodore here,” Sebastian said, cuffing the back of Theodore’s neck, “he’s the one who was friends with him.”

“You were?” Iris asked, a bit incredulous. Theodore shrugged, sighing. 

“Yeah, I was,” he said, then smiled a bit, “it was a dark time in my life.”

“Oh, please. It was a dark time in my life, too, and you didn’t see me trying to join the Death Eaters,” Sebastian said. His tone was light, teasing, but the mood still dropped as soon as he said the words _Death Eaters._ Iris supposed that the terror associated with them would never truly leave anyone’s subconscious. 

“No,” Theodore said, “you were happily hooking up with Gryffindor girls and running a Quidditch gambling ring.” His tone was light, too, but there was something about it that was different than it had been only a minute ago. 

Theodore turned towards Iris, squaring his shoulders. 

“I guess I should tell you. Back in school - or, during the war, really - I come from a pureblood family. So my father… well, he needed to prove his loyalty to You-Know-Who. I didn’t agree with him, not really. I mean, I used to, when I was younger - I believed all that blood purity stuff. But being in school, growing up… I guess I just reassessed.”

Sebastian broke in. “What he’s trying to say is that he started fancying a muggleborn girl in fifth year.”

Theodore rolled his eyes, but smiled slightly, thankful for the playfulness that Sebastian seemed to carry with him. “Yeah, that too. Anyways, by the time You-Know-Who was back, I was a lot different than I was when I was eleven. But my father wasn't. So he gave me up. I never _did_ anything, never hurt anyone… but I have the Mark. So you should probably know that, in case it changes your mind about me. Or us.”

He looked up at Iris, who thought that she had already made up her mind about Theodore and the rest of them before they had even sat down. She opened her mouth to reassure him that his being forced to get the Mark wouldn’t put her off, but Sebastian got there first. 

“You act like you two have been in a five-year relationship, Theo. _Change your mind about me?_ She probably hasn’t even made up her mind about you in the first place!”

Theodore smiled, and Iris smiled back. 

“I thought all the Death Eaters went to Azkaban?” Iris asked. “That’s what all the American papers said, anyway.”

“No,” Theodore said, “A lot of them managed to stay out of jail. There are two types of people with the Mark - people who didn’t want it,” he gestured at himself, “and people who did. Most people who wanted it are in jail, but some of the cleverest ones are still free.”

“Is… Draco?” Iris asked. The thought that her new partner could still be a full-blown blood purist was unsettling, to say the least, but she supposed she’d rather know than not. 

Theodore shrugged. “I don’t think so. The Malfoys… well, there’s a special case. I think they all got what they deserved before they even got sentenced, having You-Know-Who living with them. I’d wager it was about surviving for them, at the end. Not that they didn’t do some horrible shit before that.”

“Is that why you stopped being friends with him?” Iris asked.

“Yeah, that and the fact that he’s an absolute asshole,” Theodore grinned. He held up his left arm, which was covered by his robes, and grinned. “Even our matching tattoos couldn’t bring us together.”

Seeing as Theodore was alright joking about it, Iris thought she might as well ask. “Weird question,” she said, “But… could I maybe… see it? Your Mark?”

Theodore’s eyebrows shot up. 

“Sorry!” Iris said quickly, “I’ve just never seen one before! Is that rude?”

Theodore shook his head, breaking out into a small smile as Sebastian laughed heartily next to him. 

“Not rude,” he shrugged, “just not something most people want to see.”

He put his arm on the table, the twinkling balls of light illuminating his wrist as he slowly pulled back the sleeves of his robe, eliciting murmurs of _someone’s putting on a show_ from Sebastian. 

The Dark Mark was a lot smaller than Iris expected. She stared at it for a second, recalling the pictures she had seen in the newspapers of it writhing around on prisoners’ forearms during the Death Eater trials. It was still now. 

Theodore pulled his sleeve back down. 

“You’ve really never seen one?” Tracey asked, curiosity writ large all over her features. 

Iris shook her head. “There weren’t any American Death Eaters, not really.”

“How strange,” Tracey said, knocking back the last sip of her drink. “Did you even have a war in America?”

Iris shook her head. “It was more of a threat than anything. We had everything in place in case he won, and I think MACUSA and the Ministry were working together in the Auror department, but… no.”

All three of her new friends looked surprised at that. 

“So, in other words,” Sebastian said, leaning back and charming his drink to follow, “We did the work for you.”

Iris shrugged, laughing. “I guess so.”

“Not even a thank you?” Sebastian asked.

“Alright,” Iris said, making eye contact with Sebastian, then Theodore, then Tracey. “Thank you all so much for doing the work for America. _Much_ obliged.”

They all grinned back, Tracey hardest of all. 

“Good shout inviting her out, Sebastian,” she said, “I really like her.”

And Iris really liked them too. 

There was dancing underneath the lights, which was sweaty and cramped and perfect. More drinks flowed - Iris had a _Galleon,_ a swirling golden concoction, a _Hippogriff,_ which was creamy and tasted of chocolate, and some drink that was supposed to taste like your favorite food but ended up tasting more like rum. 

By the time the four of them made their way outside, Sebastian and Theodore once again engaged in some sort of game in which the goal seemed to be pulling each other’s hair, the moon was high overhead, and Iris felt heavy and warm. 

Tracey grabbed her arm, steadying herself and smiling. 

“You alright to apparate?” She asked, her voice husky with the firewhiskey she had stolen from Theodore’s goblet. 

“Yeah,” Iris answered, “thanks for inviting me.”

Tracey enveloped her in a hug, which Iris gladly returned. They broke apart, and Tracey threw a look over her shoulders at the boys, who were still in their own little world. 

“Anytime. Seriously,” she said, “We’ll see you at work Monday. Or sooner!”

She waved, then went to go busy herself breaking Sebastian and Theodore apart. 

Iris closed her eyes, picturing her building in her mind, stretching out towards it - and, with a twist to her stomach that she only just managed to keep under control, she found herself in front of her apartment. 

The lifts were always out of order, but she didn’t mind taking the stairs up to her door, using the time to sober up a little bit and think back over her night. 

She would call Simon and Sadie in the morning - she was sure they were dying to hear about her first day of work - but for now, all she had the energy for was a shower and slipping into bed. 

She thought about Theodore’s forearm for a second. The Dark Mark. 

Draco had it, too. 

Then his face was swimming in her mind, his cold demeanour standing opposite her as she drifted off. 

He was _so_ arrogant, rude, impolite to the worst degree. Apparently, he had been a bully in school, which didn’t surprise her, and had lived with the Dark Lord, which did. You would think that a man notorious for possibly still being a blood purist would make some sort of effort to prove otherwise. 

But he didn’t. 

And, for some reason, her last thought before she fell into real sleep was of his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sebastian supremacy


	4. Staring

_DRACO_

For a brief five minutes immediately after he woke up on Monday morning, Draco forgot about his new partner. 

It was a wonderful respite from what he was sure would be a torturous couple of months. According to Granger, Iris was supposed to stay and work at the Ministry for a year, but Draco had no doubt in his mind that she would be gone by Christmas. He had a particular skill for repelling those around him when he wanted to, and he wasn't sure that there had ever been an instance in which he had wanted to more. 

He worked better alone - no, he _only_ worked alone. His previous partners had known enough about his history to know better than to try to interact with him, but Iris seemed to be woefully ignorant. 

So it was settled - Draco would have to make her quit. And judging by how meek and submissive she had been Friday, he didn’t anticipate it being very difficult. She had thrown the odd comeback out, but those were mostly knee-jerk responses that a first-year probably could have come up with. No, for the most part, she had tried to keep her head down.

In fact, it would be fun—something else to do besides brew potions and test their effects. 

She was already there when he walked into the Love Chamber, bent over a desk, her hair clumsily pulled back from her face. Good - she had found something to do. Perhaps she would bother him less. 

He strode over to the table in the middle of the room where he had been working for the past week. As he walked, he saw Iris startle out of the corner of his eye. For some reason, it sent up a flare of annoyance in him. It seemed juvenile, childish even, to jump in surprise. 

He felt her eyes follow him as he walked around his desk, staying on him as he slowly removed the silver rings from his fingers. He ran his thumb over the one with the Malfoy crest on it. He was never sure whether he wanted to wear it or not, but after years of having it on his pointer finger every day, it had become routine. 

He looked up suddenly, catching Iris staring at him. She looked down quickly, hands clumsily moving to uncap a vial. 

She had watched him all day Friday, listened to him when he was on the phone with Pansy. 

As he pulled out his wand and conjured his notes onto the desk in front of him, he couldn’t help grinning to himself. He had almost forgotten, but now it seemed all too plain. Iris was painfully aware of his presence, her eyes finding him again and again, flitting quickly between his hands and the rings he had abandoned at the edge of the table as he continued measuring out the properties of the potion. 

He never tried to catch her staring again, even though he could have done it at any time he wanted. He would let her think he didn’t notice the way she looked at him, how she so _obviously_ fancied him. It was just knowledge, knowledge he planned on using to his full advantage. 

He successfully evaded conversation with her for all of Monday morning, but the silence broke early in the afternoon. 

He was almost finishing measuring out the proportions of the ingredients in the potion - meticulous work that he had been steadily making his way through since last Wednesday, when Iris dropped something across the room. 

It clattered to the ground, breaking Draco’s concentration. He didn’t startle - unlike Iris, he prided himself on being able to keep his composure in any situation - but his hand jerked slightly, smudging the ink on the end of his parchment. 

He looked up to find her crouching on the ground, wand out, using it to mop up a broken vial that had spilled a good portion of potion onto the ground. 

“I knew you were a waste,” he said smoothly, raising his eyebrows in disgust as she looked up at him from the ground, “but I never thought you would take it so literally.”

Cowed, Iris just looked down, finishing cleaning up the puddle and repairing the broken vial. 

Now that his attention was off his work, he allowed his gaze to fall on Iris’s workstation, which had its own cauldron bubbling with the potion. 

“Did you take that potion from my cauldron?” He asked carefully, keeping the edge out of his voice. For some reason, he wanted her to say _yes_ , he wanted an excuse to throw an insult at her, to watch her take it with her head down. 

She turned around and looked at him again, pausing on her way back to her table. She blinked.

Draco scoffed. “Well, did you?”

Iris seemed to snap out of her haze at his words. She looked down at her feet, then back up at him, and shook her head. 

“No. I made it. I’m perfectly capable.”

Draco chuckled meanly, delighting in the way her brows furrowed. 

“Perfectly capable? Is that why you were begging me for instructions yesterday?”

“I was hardly begging,” she said quietly, then walked back over to her table in quick strides. 

Draco watched the back of her head for a second, musing to himself. Most people he came across could easily be bullied into submission - perhaps _bullied_ wasn't the word… it was more of a careful manipulation. 

Iris seemed to be of the opposite variety - one of those who get braver, more impetuous, when someone talks down to them. 

As soon as the golden clock on the wall chimed to signal the end of the day, Draco pulled on his coat, using his wand to redistribute and organize his vials. 

He ran his hand through his hair when he was done - partly to get the stray strands out of his face, partly because he knew Iris was watching him. 

In the end, he left a bit after her, which led to him seeing a particularly disturbing (but altogether not surprising) scene. As he walked down the Ministry’s marble steps, he caught Iris’s robes walking down the street. 

Perhaps he wouldn’t have noticed her, and he definitely wouldn’t have given her a second look, but he was joined by three people he knew only too well. 

Tracey Davis, Sebastian Daley, and Theodore Nott. 

Tracey wasn't particularly offensive to Draco. She was two years younger than him, so he hadn’t seen much of her at Hogwarts. His only interactions with her had been when she tried out for the Slytherin Quidditch team his fifth year (she wasn't bad, but Flint had a no-girls rule) and when she hooked up with Adrian Pucey’s date at the Spring Ball (possibly another reason why Flint denied her a spot on the team).

However, her associations with Sebastian and Theodore did give her a bit of a repulsive edge. 

Sebastian, with his curly, honey-blond hair, easy smile, and reputation for being able to get any girl in the whole castle, had repulsed Draco throughout all his years at school. He managed to avoid any responsibility, which was the antithesis of Draco’s life under Lucius’s thumb. In sixth year, while Draco was desperately trying to kill his headmaster, Sebastian and his friends were taking bets on how many Gryffindor girls he could hook up with. 

Theodore, though, was the worst of all. He and Draco had been friends once, joined together by their loyalties in the war, the marks on their forearms. Theodore had always been the stoic type, quiet and strong, whip-smart and not afraid to use his abilities to nefarious ends. But his father wasn't as acquainted with the Dark Lord as Lucius had been, so he, too, had managed to avoid most responsibility during the war. 

After his trial ended and he was cleared of all charges, Theodore had easily blended back into society, adopting a more charming and funny gait and aligning himself with people like Sebastian. When Draco was serving his two years of house arrest, trapped in a house full of chilling memories with only the ghost of his mother to keep him company, Theodore hadn’t done a thing. Not a single letter. It was as if he would rather his friendship with Draco not have existed in the first place. 

Not that Draco had needed him. He hadn’t needed anybody, had he? Just Pansy, in fits and starts. That’s the only thing he had ever needed. 

He ran his hand through his hair again, this time in frustration. If Iris was going to be friends with the three of them, she would undoubtedly become even more unbearable. 

On Tuesday morning, she proved his theory. She was in the Department of Mysteries when he arrived, but she wasn't inside the Love Chamber - she was standing in the hallway outside the door to the Hall of Prophecies, talking to Sebastian. 

Draco wasted no time calling her out for it. 

As soon as she dropped her bag and assumed her position in front of her workstation, he spoke. 

“So, you’re hanging out with Sebastian Daley now?”

She turned slightly, her eyes catching his. He held them easily, reveling in the confusion in her gaze.

“Yeah,” she said. Her tone was unsure, almost as if she was asking a question. 

“And his friends, too?”

Iris turned to face him completely. “If you mean Theodore and Tracey, yeah. I like them.”

Draco chuckled darkly. He captured her eyes in his once more, holding them hostage, daring her to turn around and knowing she wouldn’t. She would stare at him as long as he let her. 

“Sounds about right,” he sneered, letting his gaze fall back on his potion. He took out a vial. Conversation over. 

But it wasn't, because Iris spoke again. 

“What’s that mean?” She asked. 

He looked up at her once again, using his wand to pour out the potion into the vials even as he made eye contact with her—an impressive bit of magic, one that had taken almost a year to master. 

“You seem like _their_ type of person,” he said easily, keeping his tone clear of any rudeness even though he knew she would take it as an insult - he wanted her to. 

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Nothing I wouldn’t expect from you.”

Draco kept his eyes down on his work, not wanting to give her any more attention than was necessary, but he couldn’t help glancing up at her. Her eyes were narrowed, her posture stiffer than it had been minutes ago. 

Yes, she was the arguing type.

“You’ve known me for two days. You have no idea what to _expect_ from me,” she said, eyes blazing. 

Draco scribbled down another note, letting the silence drag out. He knew she was waiting for him to respond, standing there staring at him, and the thought cheered him considerably. For all her indignant words and fiery glares, he was the one in control of the situation. And he had always liked being in control.

“What, nothing to say to that?” She asked after a while, still searching for a fight that she could win, a way to prove to him that she was worthy of being here. 

He gave her part of what she wanted - he looked up at her, not missing the way her eyes fell to his lips for a fraction of a second before he spoke. 

“I’ve nothing to say to you at all.”

“You started this whole conversation -”

“And now I’m ending it. If you would be so kind as to stop distracting me from my work.”

Her eyes flickered with building annoyance, but there was really nothing to say to that, so she turned around and got back to work. Another argument won. Draco had always been particularly good at taking the last word. 

As he finished his notes on the purple potion’s properties and started comparing them to previous records of confiscated black market potions, he found himself wondering exactly what Iris was doing. 

She had her own version of the potion on her table - one that, though he hated to admit it, had probably been brewed well - but besides that, she had taken out a variety of different ingredients that had nothing to do with it and was adding them to additional vials. 

It seemed like just the sort of thing that a novice would try, but as long as she kept her experiments out of his way, it suited him fine. 

The day crawled by, and Draco spent it trying to figure out how best to get under Iris’s skin. His usual default was belittlement and manipulation.

Iris, however was not as easily manipulated as the eleven-year-olds he had met on the Hogwarts Express first year. His commentary incensed her, that much was all too clear, but it didn’t seem to deter her. She appeared to be the rare type of person who took his slights as motivation to prove him wrong instead of believing his words. 

Just like Harry Potter and his fucking friends had been. It infuriated Draco. And, regrettably, it made it a lot harder to think of ways he could get her to quit. 

Ironically, Iris herself gave Draco the idea he had been searching for. He had noticed the way she had been watching him, how her eyes seemed to fall onto him by default every time he moved. He had dismissed it as nothing more than hopeless pining, the same way girls had behaved towards him back at school, and probably the result of the love magic of the room that she wasn't yet used to. 

But at the end of the day, as he pulled on his coat, he felt her eyes sweep up and down his body swiftly, her hands pausing as she went to pick up her bag. And this time, he decided to call her out for it. 

He looked up quickly, catching her eyes on his face. She looked down and grabbed her bag with haste, pulling it over her shoulder. 

“Staring?” He asked, and her eyes snapped back to his. 

To his surprise, a slight blush painted her cheeks, and her eyes looked less angry and more embarrassed. She didn’t say anything, the redness on her cheeks slowly deepening. 

“You were,” he drawled, answering his own question. He raised his eyebrows at her and allowed a small, condescending smile onto his face. 

She looked down, refusing to meet his eyes. “I wasn't,” she said quietly, a feeble excuse when he had caught her doing just that. 

She left the Love Chamber with her head down, and as Draco pulled on his coat, the idea came to him at once. 

If his insults wouldn’t make her uneasy, wouldn't make her want to quit, perhaps he should use the other weapon he had always kept in his arsenal - charm. If calling her out for looking at him had caused her to blush that deeply, he doubted she would be able to work with him much longer if he started suggesting that she fancied him more often. 

Though it was hardly a suggestion. It was a fact.


	5. Overtime

_IRIS_

Iris leaned back lightly against the walls of the lift, staring at her reflection in the mirrored doors. She was thankful for the reflective doors, glad to confirm nothing about her appearance was completely off base before she stepped out of the lift and onto the ninth floor. 

She tucked her hair behind her ears absentmindedly, but, after a couple of seconds of staring at her reflection, she decided it had looked better before. Then she felt a little bit stupid for caring. 

The doors came to a halt, the mirrors receding and the bars behind them rising into the ceiling. 

“Level Nine,” a woman’s voice said, “Department of Mysteries.”

Iris stepped out of the elevator and into the gleaming black lobby. She wasn't yet used to the dark glamour of her new workplace - the black marble floors that changed effortlessly into walls, the click of heels on the shining tiles, the gold lining. It was Friday morning, only her sixth day of work. 

She scanned the lobby absentmindedly, looking to see if Tracey, Sebastian, or Theodore were anywhere to be found, but she didn’t recognize any of the witches and wizards bustling about. It didn’t seem like many people were in the mood to chat this morning, though she did hear a couple of people casting alertness charms on themselves. 

Iris walked over to the door of the Love Chamber, admiring the way her own heels sounded on the floor. She raised her wand to the lock to identify herself, and heard the telltale click as the door opened for her. 

She smoothed her hands over her robes as the doors closed behind her, leaving her in the entrance hall. She wished there was a mirror in here, too. But as soon as that thought crossed her mind, she banished it. 

She shouldn’t care what she looked like, not if the only person who was going to see her all day was Draco Malfoy. 

It was bad enough working with someone whose main personality trait seemed to be making the people around him feel inferior. What was worse, though, is that she often found her eyes falling on his face or his hands, watching his sharp jaw, high cheekbones, the shape of his nose, the way his hair fell in his face as he worked and the way his hands wrapped around vials. 

It wasn't that she had a crush on him - even using that word in her head seemed juvenile. To like someone, she thought, you have to _like_ them, and she didn’t like Malfoy at all. His personality repulsed her. 

Unfortunately, though, his face did not. And even though Iris had used the _Naris Opillo_ charm every morning to block her nose from the Amortentia, she had a theory that there was something about the Love Chamber that was heightening her unnerving attraction to him. 

It was easier when she didn’t talk to him, but, despite all his protestations about having to work with someone else, he seemed to have a penchant for starting arguments. 

And Iris had never been one to back down from an argument.

But Draco wasn't either. He brought a patronizing air to their conversations, as if everything they were talking about was so beneath him that he didn’t care what the outcome was. It was the opposite of Iris’s fiery stubbornness and unwillingness to back down, and he used it to his advantage, making Iris seem as though she cared too much.

But even that wasn't as bad as what had happened Tuesday right before they left work. 

Draco had been pulling on a long black coat over his robes, an interesting green lining that complemented his rings. His hand had gone to his hair, pulling his fingers through it absentmindedly as Iris had noticed he was apt to do. 

But this time, as her gaze had quickly swept him, he looked up and caught her. 

Any other decent person would’ve played it off, pretended it never happened, but Draco seemed to revel in making Iris uncomfortable. So instead, he had called her out, refusing point-blank to let her pretend that she hadn’t been looking at him. 

Since then, he had been acting… different. Strange in a way she couldn’t quite figure out. 

And now, on Friday morning, standing outside the door she knew he was behind, she felt her face grow hot just thinking about it. 

_“Naris Opillo,”_ she murmured. Her nose closed up immediately, which she imagined would never stop being disarming. Usually, she waited to do it until after she was already inside the Love Chamber, but she didn’t want a single whiff of the Amortentia to hit her today. Not when she was around Draco.

Just as she was reaching for the door handle, taking a deep breath in and resolving to keep herself calm and collected all day, the door opened from the inside. 

“I thought I heard you,” Draco said. 

His hand rested casually on the golden handle, his eyebrows raised. Instead of his usual robes, he wore a fitted pair of black trousers paired with an expensive-looking belt and a white button-down shirt that could have used fewer buttons undone, in Iris’s opinion. Just for the sake of her sanity. 

_Cool and collected,_ Iris reminded herself, and looked up to meet his eyes. 

“Are you going to let me by?” She asked. 

He chuckled, standing aside, and she stepped into the Love Chamber. 

She had seen it before three times now, but she didn’t think that the romantic grandeur of the room would ever cease to amaze her. 

Outside the enchanted windows, a couple of birds flew around the trees. Iris wondered if it was a real place they were looking out to or whether it was just an incantation. 

Trying to ignore Draco, who was standing far too close to her right side, she walked over to the table she had been working at for the past two days. Out of her periphery, she watched him walk over to his. 

She briefly considered moving to the other side of her table so that she wouldn’t have to face him while she worked, but he would notice. And he would have no problem calling her out for it, either. 

So instead, she focused all her attention on the little experiment that she had been doing.

She wasn't sure exactly what they were supposed to be studying about the potion. Whatever it was, Draco was probably doing it, what with his tedious measuring and relentless note-taking. 

Seeing as Iris had no idea what he was doing or what she was expected to be doing, she had taken it upon herself to try her own experiment. 

According to Draco, the potion caused periods of heightened susceptibility in the drinker that could last up to a month. Iris shuddered to think about how black market buyers were using the potion, but she couldn’t help but compare its composition to that of Veritaserum. 

Veritaserum had long been the standard for interrogation techniques, but since it took so long to brew, it cost a lot - and lower-level government departments often didn’t have the funds to use it. Though effective, it was often invasive and had some probability of causing brief memory lapses in prisoners. 

This potion, Iris thought, could be used as a less expensive and more humane alternative to Veritaserum - the only problem was that she hadn’t yet figured out how to dilute the potion enough so that the period of heightened susceptibility would last for an hour instead of a month. 

She knew better than to try to water it down - her second-year Potions and Antidotes class had taught her that much - but she thought that a specific ingredient ought to do it, and she had narrowed it down to three that she thought could do the trick. 

Antimony, bat wings, and Lobalug venom. 

Caught up in her work now, she measured out the potion she had brewed into three smaller cauldrons. According to Viridian’s Sixth Theory, the staying power of a potion often correlates with its shade, so Iris theorized that, if she were successful, the potion would turn a lighter shade of purple. 

It was times like these, she thought as she levitated the liquid Antimony from its vial, careful not to get too close to its molten heart, that she remembered why she did this job. The joy of figuring things out, getting closer, narrowing down ingredients and scrutinizing shades - there would never be anything like this. 

Her optimistic feelings dampened slightly when the Antimony only made the potion bubble more, heating up so quickly that she had to cast a freezing charm on the potion so that it wouldn’t overflow. 

And they dampened even more when she heard Draco’s voice in front of her. Right in front of her.

She looked up, almost startling at the sound of his voice. She wondered how he had managed to walk over to her table without her noticing, but she supposed she had been a bit caught up in her work. 

“Am I seeing things?” Draco drawled, “or did you just try to add Antimony to the potion?”

“Yes,” Iris replied carefully, thinking that this had to be some sort of trap. 

Draco raised his eyebrows, his lips curling slightly into a small smile. It wasn't exactly patronizing, though - in fact, Iris found that she couldn’t read the meaning behind it. It made her feel uneasy.

Then horrifyingly, he sauntered over to her side of the table, his shirt (had he undone another button?) brushing against Iris’s robes. 

“Why?” He asked, turning to face her. 

“No reason you care about,” she said, wordlessly vanishing the frozen mixture from the first cauldron before he could get a closer look at it. She was sure he would have quite a lot to say.

“I think you’ll find I care about it quite a bit,” Draco said. 

Iris wondered whether she should keep her eyes on the table and pretend to be disinterested in the reason he was over here, but she couldn’t help herself from trying to figure out what exactly he meant, and the best way to figure that would be by studying his expression.

Well, for anyone else, maybe. Draco’s expression was more like a window looking out on a brick wall than a window looking out onto any emotion. 

“Well, don’t,” Iris replied, pulling the second cauldron towards her. “It’s annoying.”

That much was true - Iris would rather get work done than have to traverse another conversation with Draco. 

“You find me distracting?” Draco asked, his voice a fraction lower and quieter than it had been before. The sleeve of his button-down brushed against Iris’s robes again. The touch seemed to linger. 

“That is _not_ what I said,” Iris countered, wondering if she should disregard his presence entirely and focus on her experiment or whether doing that would just elicit more questions from him. 

“It’s what you meant, though, isn’t it.”

“No, actually, what I meant was that I’d like you to leave so I can keep working in peace.”

“The connotation of that, Iris, is that you find me distracting.”

She hated the way he said her name. He made the “I” sound so round, the “s” a quick whisper. Maybe she _did_ find him distracting, but that was only because of his unique ability to annoy her to her wit’s end. 

“Fine,” Iris said, “you’re distracting me from my work. Is that what you want to hear?”

Draco raised his eyebrows, his smirk widening slightly. “I’m glad you’re trying to give me what I want,” he drawled, his voice somehow even lower than it had been, “but I would hate to take you away from… whatever you’re doing over here.”

“You can go ahead and leave, then.”

“What is it about me that you find so distracting?”

Iris tried to think of something to say back to that one, but everything she thought of seemed to have some sort of sexual connotation, and under no circumstances could she allow Draco to figure out about her weird attraction to him before she could deal with it herself. 

So instead, she settled for: “Fuck off.”

Draco chuckled. He managed to make laughter sound dark and mirthless. 

“Not until you tell me.”

“Tell you what, exactly?”

“Why you find me so distracting.”

Maybe if she stopped talking to him, he would go away. She used this same tactic on Delaney Wetherbred in eleventh grade, so she figured that it had a chance of working on Draco. His level of annoyance rivaled even that of Delaney’s. 

“Is it my voice?” He broke the silence so quietly he was almost whispering. Iris felt his body move closer to her, his shirt brushing her robes for the third time.

“Or maybe it’s my hands,” he said, and her eyes fell on them. They were holding the side of the table in a loose but somehow firm grip, his rings decorating them. A snake, a family crest, and a simple silver band. She looked away, back to her second cauldron. 

“You keep looking at them, after all… but I’d guess it’s the way my shirt keeps brushing yours,” he said, and did it again, this time more substantially. Iris pulled her arm away, and he laughed under his breath above her.

“Or maybe,” Iris countered, looking up at him and bringing the level of her own voice down so that Draco had to lean in a fraction to hear her right, “it’s how arrogant you are.”

To Iris’s great delight, he looked a little taken aback. But as quickly as his face registered in surprise, it turned back to his usual easy smirk. 

“That’s it, Iris,” he said - round ‘I,’ soft ‘s’ - “I like it when you get mad.”

For some reason, he looked like he was being absolutely serious. Iris snapped her gaze back down to her cauldron immediately, willing herself not to react - but how could she not respond to a thing like that?

She felt her cheeks heating up slightly, and, choosing to blame it on the steam coming up from the potion, she leaned back a little bit from the cauldron. 

“What,” Draco said from behind her, “nothing to say to that?”

“What do people _usually_ say to that?” Iris asked, tone bathed in sarcasm, finding her footing in the conversation again as a wave of annoyance ripped through her. 

Draco, not deigning to answer her question, dropped his gaze from hers for the first time. His eyes fell to her lips, then further down, tracing the outline of her body. He returned his stare to hers after a couple of seconds, wearing an expression that Iris couldn’t read as anything other than satisfaction. 

“Yes,” he said, “I like it when you get mad.”

Iris looked away immediately, trying to hide the way her cheeks were definitely getting even redder. He should not be having such an effect on her - and, if he was, he certainly didn’t need to _know_ about it. He had enough of an ego as it was.

For some reason, Draco took her turning away as a cue to move closer. His shirt sleeve brushed the sleeve of her robe again, but this time it didn’t disappear. He took off his rings one by one, lining them up on the edge of the table. 

“So tell me, then - unless I’m too distracting - what exactly are you doing?”

Iris supposed she could tell him to fuck off again, but that hadn’t gone over so well last time, and she hardly wanted him to think that she actually found him distracting. Which meant that the alternative was telling him what she was doing. 

She launched into her whole narrative about Veritaserum and how she thought that this potion could be used as a better alternative for some cases, and was surprised that Draco seemed to be paying attention to her. 

“Anyways,” she said, “I’m just testing these ingredients, seeing if any of them turn the mixture lighter.”

“Viridian’s Sixth Theory,” Draco mused to himself. He glanced at the empty cauldron, then back at her. “Antimony was a juvenile idea,” he said, “but I think the Lobalug venom might work.”

He leaned back for a second, squinting at her as if she was a specimen that he was considering adding to a potion. 

“Maybe I was wrong,” he said, nodding towards her forehead, “seems there’s something going on up there after all.”

Iris glowered into her cauldron. “ _Maybe_ you aren’t right all the time.”

“Relax,” Draco said, reaching over Iris’s torso to grab the vial with the Lobalug venom in it. “Just trying to get you angry.”

Somehow, that made Iris even angrier, but showing it now would only invite more of… whatever Draco was doing. 

Even though it hadn’t been his idea, Draco took it upon himself to pour the venom into the potion. It didn’t seem to do anything at first, the potion remaining its standard deep shade of purple. Just as Iris was about to admit defeat, though, Draco stirred it once counterclockwise, and the mixture lightened at once. 

He turned to her with a smug look, as if he was the mastermind behind this whole operation. 

“Shacklebolt will want to know about this,” he said. 

Then he turned and marched out of the room. 

As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, Iris let out a breath that she had been holding for the last hour. She glanced at his rings, which he had left on the table, then turned around and forced herself to stare out the enchanted window. 

The birds were no longer flying around, but the sky was blue save for a couple of fat clouds and the bright green leaves on the trees rustled back and forth slightly. 

Calmer now, Iris turned back around and began going over the conversation she had just had in her head. 

There was no way Draco was oblivious to the connotations of his words - _I like it when you get mad,_ he had said, and it was impossible to miss the way his eyes had fallen down her body and dragged back up to her gaze. 

It was much more deliberate than the once-over he had given her when they first met, and, for a second, Iris entertained the thought that Draco found her attractive, too. 

Not that it would matter. If his way of flirting with her was pissing her off and making her embarrassed enough to blush, she wanted no part of that. She wanted no part of him in general - that much was becoming clearer day by day. 

But at least he had listened to her talk about her potion. Even if he was definitely taking credit for her idea with the Minister. Fucking annoying. 

Draco was gone for somewhere around ten minutes, and he came back with a piece of parchment levitating in the air behind him. 

Iris raised her eyebrows, asking for information, and, for once, he obliged.

“Shacklebolt wants us to make thirty cauldrons of it for immediate testing,” he said, turning the floating parchment towards Iris. She couldn’t make out exactly what it said, but it looked like some sort of form. 

“By when?”

Draco scoffed. “By today. Obviously,” he said. “He’s chuffed about it, wants to discuss it with the department heads Monday morning.”

Iris smiled to herself, proud that her first bit of work here was worthy of the Minister of Magic himself. Thirty cauldrons was quite a bit, though, especially when she didn’t have a real set of instructions for the base potion. 

She watched absentmindedly as Draco levitated five cauldrons down from the wall, using a simultaneous _Aguamenti_ charm to fill them all up at the same time. It was an impressive bit of magic. Unfortunately, he caught her watching it. 

“If you think we’re working together on this, you thought wrong,” he said, flicking his wand to end the enchantment. 

Of course. It would never cease to amaze Iris how much Draco thought the world revolved around him. 

“I didn’t think that. Though I’m sure you were happy enough taking credit for my work with the Minister?”

“I didn’t. You should know by now, Iris - I don’t lie.”

Iris opened her mouth to say something else, but Draco spoke again before she could. 

“Angry, are you?” He said, smirking. 

Fuck him. Being angry with him was the only thing getting Iris through having to be near him, and of course, he had taken that possibility away from her, too. If she didn’t say a thing, she’d come off as weak, but if she got angry… he would _like_ it. Or so he said. 

She supposed the only way to prove him wrong today would be making as much of the new potion as possible. 

Instead of trying it in a bunch of different cauldrons, Iris decided to use one of the big ones on the wall. She supposed it would hold around eight normal cauldrons, so she just had to brew two rounds of potions in it before Draco did, and she’d win. Never mind that the whole competition was in her head - it was all too real now. 

Once Iris filled it up with the water base and brought it to boil with a particularly strong Heating Charm, she went to work on the ingredients, separating them and measuring so that she didn’t have to waste time making sure her proportions were right down the road. 

The only distracting thing was the fact that she felt the need to watch Draco out of the corner of her eye the entire time she was brewing to make sure he wasn't cheating. 

He seemed to be engrossed in his work entirely. He had charmed his notes to hover in the air next to him, and his hands were nimble with the ingredients, his knife hitting the cutting board in precise intervals. 

The steam rising from his cauldrons was somehow not making him sweat at all, but there were a couple of strands of hair that seemed to be giving him trouble. They hung over his brow, and once in a while, he would brush them out of his face. 

Iris swore he must have unbuttoned yet another button on his shirt - otherwise, how could it be hanging off him like that when he leaned over the table?

“Perhaps if you stopped staring at me, we’d be done faster,” he said out of nowhere, and Iris immediately looked back into her cauldron, a blush staining her cheeks for what felt like the hundredth time. 

How on earth did he keep seeing her out of his periphery?

“I’m making sure you aren’t cheating,” she mumbled.

“I’ll tell you what you’re doing,” Draco said. She saw him turn to face her, but tried to keep her attention focused on the massive cauldron in front of her. “You’re blushing.”

Due to circumstances entirely beyond Iris’s control, her blush deepened. 

“And now you’re blushing even harder. Am I _distracting_ you from across the room?”

“No,” Iris insisted, grabbing a handful of Ashwinder eggs. 

He was trying to make her flustered now; she could tell by how smug his smile was. He was still turned towards her, using his wand to levitate perfect piles of ingredients into his cauldrons as he watched her. He only had the Lobalug Venom to add, and a couple stirs, and he’d be done. _Fuck_ , how had he done it so fast?

Iris dropped the Ashwinder eggs into her cauldron. 

Then everything blew up. Literally.

Iris felt the mixture heating up at an alarming rate, heating her face even more than it already was. She figured out what was happening just in time to scramble backward, but not with enough time to avoid the cloud of ash that seemed to explode from the cauldron - giant black plumes of smoke. 

She coughed, turning her face so that she wouldn’t breathe in the smoke as she ran further away from it, getting to her feet and reluctantly turning back to see the damage she had done. 

She caught sight of Draco, who was staring at the cauldron with a mixture of surprise and rage on his face. 

And right at that moment, the cauldron gave a horrible cracking sound, the glass bowing in on itself amidst the smoke. The potion seeped out from the crack, and Iris realized her mistake at once as flames began to rise from the liquid seeping across the floor. 

She raised her wand to stop it, but Draco got there first. 

_”Aguamenti_ ,” he said steadily, drowning the fire in precise streams of water. 

Iris rubbed her eyes, sure the ash from the cauldron had stained her face. In her haste, she must have put the leftover Ashwinder eggs into the mix instead of the pile she had carefully measured out. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Draco said, breaking her train of thought, and she looked up to see that his expression was stern with rage. 

His wand was pointed at the floor, now mopping up the spilled mixture, and the air was slowly clearing of the smoke. Iris felt herself blush again, but this time in real shame.

“I asked you a question,” Draco growled. His change of tone did not go unnoticed. 

He had been bothering her all day, but at least he had listened to her earlier - at least he wasn't as cold as he had been before. Now, though, it seemed like he had reverted to his stature on the first day. But somehow even angrier. 

“I…” Iris said, looking down at the rapidly shrinking puddle of potion on the ground, “I think I added the wrong pile of Ashwinder eggs.”

“You know you just ruined eight cauldrons of that,” he said. 

“I’ll redo it,” Iris said back. “It was a mistake.”

“You shouldn’t be making mistakes.”

Iris straightened her back, refusing to let Draco walk all over her, even if she was sure that she looked slightly crazy with soot all over her face. 

“If it weren’t for me, we wouldn’t be making this potion in the first place. I’m the one who figured it out,” she said, narrowing her eyes at Draco, who returned her gaze with cold superiority. 

“You couldn’t have done it without me.”

“Oh, sorry,” Iris said, bristling with the beginnings of real anger, “I had no idea I was sharing a room with Nicholas Flamel. Last I checked, all you did was stir the potion once.”

“At least I didn’t fucking blow it up. You’re impossible. I knew it from the first day, and now you’ve only gone and proven it.”

“It’s not that big of a fucking deal, Draco. I’ll just make a new batch.”

“We don’t have enough ingredient stores to make up for the eight cauldrons you just wasted. I guess I’m off to Shacklebolt’s again - I’ll make sure to tell him this was your fault, since you so desperately want credit where credit’s due.”

Suddenly, Iris felt a bit bad. She hadn’t blown up a potion in a long time, and if they didn’t have enough stores to make up what she wasted, they would miss their deadline with the Ministry. 

“I can come -” she said, but Draco cut her off before she could continue. 

“You’ve done enough, actually, wouldn’t you say?”

Iris couldn’t think of a reply to that before he was gone. 

She turned back to the broken cauldron. Draco had already mopped up the spilled potion, but Iris didn’t want to feel useless, so she went to work repairing the glass. It was a tricky bit of magic, especially with something so big, but her guilty feelings were only growing. 

Yes, Draco was an asshole, but he was undoubtedly good at his job. He made simultaneously levitating his parchment while pouring the exact same proportions of water into five cauldrons at once look easy. He had cleaned up her mess while his potions were still brewing behind him, and she was sure if she peered over them now, they’d all be the perfect shade of lavender. 

Which meant Iris wanted to prove him wrong for two reasons:

Because she’d like to see him have to admit he was wrong about something, and;  
His approval would mean that she actually _was_ doing her job well. 

And by splitting the cauldron, she had only succeeded in proving him right. Though it was partly his fault - he had definitely been trying to get her worked up, make her flustered. Perhaps the worst part of this whole thing was that it had worked. 

As soon as Draco returned to the room, it became abundantly clear that the fact that he had made her flustered was _not_ the worst part of this whole thing. The actual worst part was that, as Draco had said, they didn’t have enough stores to meet the deadline. 

Shacklebolt was ordering more ingredients stores that were due to come in tonight, which meant that they would have to come in tomorrow and finish so that Kingsley could still present the potion to the department heads on Monday morning. 

And Draco was not happy about having to come in on a Saturday morning. 

“I’m sorry, it’s my fault,” Iris said, hoping her taking responsibility for the situation would lessen Draco’s hostility towards her. 

“Of course it’s your fault,” he growled, grabbing his coat off the wall. “If it were up to me, you’d be fired. You’re clearly incompetent.”

Iris was stung by that, but not enough to distract her from the fact that Draco was putting on his coat and walking towards the door even though they still had two hours on the clock before the day ended. 

“Are you leaving?” She asked. 

He stopped, throwing a glare over his shoulder. “There’s nothing to do here until we get back the ingredients you ruined.”

“Fine. See you tomorrow.”

“You know what? Why don’t you just stay home. You’d be doing everyone a favor,” he shot back, then swung open the door and left. 

Iris walked back over to the giant cauldron, now fixed, and levitated it back up onto the wall. 

There was no denying that she was pissed off at Draco - she seemed to always be at least a little pissed off at him - but the dominant feeling she had as she packed up her work table was guilt. 

It was only the sixth day of her new job, and she felt like she had already fucked up beyond fixing. There was no way Draco would ever trust her to brew a potion again, not to mention the fact that he told the Minister exactly what happened. 

She wouldn’t be surprised if he fired her. That’s probably what Draco wanted, anyway. He had probably been hoping she would make a mistake, hoping that something would go wrong so that he could go running to get rid of her. 

The idea came to her at once.

She couldn’t exactly go back in time and brew the potion perfectly, so she supposed the next best thing was proving that she was willing to fix her mistake. And it would show Draco, too. 

She wouldn’t wait for tomorrow morning to come in and have to endure Draco’s sure-to-be-sour mood. No. She would wait here until the ingredients came in and brew everything tonight. 

Foolproof.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> getting into the meat of the story now! very excited :)
> 
> thank you all for reading as always!


	6. Blush

_DRACO_

His walk home was warmer in the summer, but Draco had always preferred the cold. 

There was no reason for him to be wearing a coat in the placid warmth of June, but the thought of taking it off hadn’t crossed his mind. No, his thoughts were elsewhere. And they were nowhere near as tranquil as the weather. 

Draco hadn’t had to come into work on a Saturday even once since he had started in the Department of Mysteries. He was exacting in his work, finishing his projects with ease and meeting deadlines before they were even set. 

Trust Iris to ruin that for him.

He had known she would be a hindrance to him from the day Granger first introduced her, and she had proven as much every day with her slow, pointless work and menagerie of annoying questions. 

But this - well, this took the cake. 

And the day had started well, too. 

His plan had been going off without a hitch. She was blushing at his every word, her body tensing every time his shirt sleeve so much as brushed her robes. It was more apparent to Draco than ever how much the girl fancied him, and, thus, it would be easier than ever to make her quit. 

She had even convinced him that she wasn't entirely stupid. Draco hadn’t even thought about the practical uses of the potion, and the fact that she had brewed an alternative to Veritaserum without a recipe was nothing short of impressive. 

Minister Shacklebolt had been over the moon when Draco told him - and he had told him that it was Iris who figured it out, too. He resented her accusation that he had lied. Draco had been many things over the course of his life, but he liked to think that a liar wasn't one of them. 

Anyway, things had been going quite well. His plan, his work life - it was all coming together. He supposed he could ride the high of Iris’s achievements even when she quit. 

And then she had gone and blown up the Love Chamber. 

To be fair, he was distracting her at the time. Talking to her, winding her up when she was supposed to be focusing on brewing. But it was her fault for being so easily distracted. Draco was brewing with his back turned while he was talking to her, and _he_ hadn’t managed to fuck anything up. 

Yes, it was definitely her fault. Her fault for getting so flustered, her fault for blushing like that. 

It was so easy to tell when he was affecting her - almost too easy. Her eyes would flicker down, then back up, as if checking she wasn't making anything up. Her cheeks would pinken, darkening to a shade of red that painted the tip of her nose, too. 

Draco had always found people who blush easily to be extremely off-putting. If his cheeks went red at the drop of a hat, he would have found some sort of glamour to cover it up long ago. 

But he hoped that Iris didn’t. He hoped she was unaware of how she looked at him, unaware of her face reddening and her eyebrows knitting together, her eyes darting around, her hands stilling. He didn’t want her to stop doing it. 

If only because he enjoyed having an effect on people he disliked. The power of it. The knowledge that he was better than them, in that small way at least. 

He resolved to make her look like that more often. It served her right for making him come in on a Saturday. 

But the further he got towards his apartment, the fewer thoughts of Iris crossed his mind. 

They were replaced, instead, by thoughts of Pansy. She had sent him an owl last night saying she would come over. It had only been a week since the last time he saw her. Usually, he had to wait at least two between visits.

According to Pansy, this interim was due to her duties as the socialite daughter of the Parkinson family. These duties included pompous dinner parties and afternoon teas, attending openings of high-class galleries and museums that she would never visit again, and being photographed walking around Diagon Alley. 

Draco supposed the truth was closer to the fact that she was afraid of being seen coming to his apartment building at all, much less often. 

And he knew she liked to keep him waiting. 

She had always liked keeping him waiting, keeping him a little bit unsure, demanding him when and where she wanted and never if she didn’t. And Draco was willing to comply, willing to meet only on her schedule - and then only at his apartment, never hers. 

He would do what he needed to keep her in his life, and he knew she would do what she needed to keep him in hers. 

She had been engaged three times now, but never married. She would give some trite, small reason for breaking her engagements, but Draco knew it was because she was afraid of losing him. She skipped events and snuck around and risked being caught, risked ruining her reputation - the only thing she had for herself - just so that she could be with him. 

They had always been dependent creatures.

The sun was still high in the sky as Draco made it home. Another reason why he preferred winter - he liked the darkness, the edge to it, the short days and long nights. 

His apartment was empty when he got home, but that was to be expected. Pansy liked the dark, too. It was easier for her to blend in, less of a chance of being noticed as she slipped into his apartment. 

He exhaled, taking his coat off and stretching. He waved his wand absentmindedly at the cabinets, swinging one open. He leaned against the wall, surveying its contents, before summoning a bottle of wine. 

He poured it into a glass in midair, then sent it back to the cabinet. With the glass hovering above his shoulder, he made his way into the living room. Big, floor-to-ceiling windows let the sun’s waning light in, and Draco stood and watched the city for a while as he sipped his wine. 

Pansy ended up coming before dark. She never knocked. He knew she was there from the muted click of his door opening, the almost-silent swish of air as it opened, the click of her heels on the floor. 

He turned and watched her walk in, a tranquil expression on her face. She walked through the kitchen and towards the living room, and he turned and watched her. He was always happy to watch her. 

She was wearing a long black dress, a silken sheen, grabbing on to her body in just the right places. 

She came to a stop in the middle of the room, watching Draco watch her, loving his eyes on her. 

And he knew, as she brought her shoulder forward and let the sleeve dip off it, that there could never be something else as perfect as this. Her collarbones stood out from her chest, her thin neck and sharp jaw turned slightly as she let the other sleeve fall, her full lips, a deep red, parted as the dress fell from her body, pooling on the floor beneath her. 

He came to meet her. She took a step forward, her heels clicking softly on the floor. 

So he leaned down to her, hand on the small of her back - hands everywhere, and she sighed in his ear as he lifted her into the air, turning around to push her back onto the window. 

She shuddered as the cool glass hit her back, her hands scrambling at the buttons on his shirt. He loved her always, but especially like this - ecstasy on her face, desperate for him. 

The sun set behind them as she grabbed at his skin, nails making little indents in his arms. He could never leave a mark on her, but she left plenty on him, bruises travelling from his neck to his chest. 

He lay her down on the couch, the lights from the city behind them making her eyes gleam. He was on top of her, eclipsing her, and she let him, let him take whatever he wanted from her as long as there would be no evidence of it in the morning. 

She whispered his name into his ear, her hands grabbing at his back, his waist, digging in, more half-moon marks for him to rub his fingers over tomorrow. 

They lay side by side, his chest moving up and down, hair hanging over his brow. He was finished, long gone, but she was still holding onto him, her voice still moaning iterations of his name as he worked his fingers in and out of her. 

She threw her head back, her back arched, her eyes closed. He was sure, in these moments, that she could never leave him. Nobody else could make her feel like this. Just him. She could keep him waiting all she wanted - he knew, when she looked like this, that he was the one with the real power. 

Perhaps that’s why, when someone knocked on the door, he got up to answer it. 

As soon as she felt the loss of contact, Pansy’s eyes shot open, her body twisting in disbelief. 

“You’re not getting that, are you?” She said, her body squirming slightly, eyes flicking back and forth across his face. 

Draco summoned a towel from the bathroom and wrapped it around his waist. 

“You’ll just have to wait for me,” he whispered, and turned before he could see her reaction. 

It was probably some _Daily Prophet_ representative at the door, or perhaps his neighbor seeing if he had any extra Dreamless Sleep. Draco didn’t care, really - he wasn't going to the door for company. 

He was going to the door to keep Pansy waiting, to make her want him even more. He smirked to himself, picturing her naked body on the couch, just lying there waiting, close and wanting.

But his smile quickly disappeared once he opened the door. 

Because Iris was standing there, hair pulled back, big eyes narrow with what seemed to be satisfaction. 

Her eyes met his, then quickly dropped to the towel around his waist. Her brows furrowed, obviously confused, then flickered to his hair, which was definitely messier than usual.

Draco watched in equal parts anticipation and horror as Iris figured out exactly what she had walked in on. Her gaze rested on his chest for a couple of seconds too long, staring at the fresh marks Pansy had left behind, one still wet from her tongue. 

“Iris,” Draco said casually, and her eyes snapped back to him. 

She looked nothing short of horrified. 

“I - I was coming to tell you… I mean, I stayed… I waited for the stores to come in? From the Ministry? And I… well, I brewed the potions. And sent them in, all thirty. Um… so… we don’t have to come in tomorrow - I mean, _you_ don’t. Well, neither of us do. So.”

Draco raised his eyebrows. What a fucking lunatic, staying behind to do overtime work alone. Her cheeks were redder than he had ever seen them, her eyes darting all around but never resting on his, her hands clasped tightly together. A strand of hair fell into her face, but she didn’t make any move to fix it. 

“How did you get my address?” Draco asked, the smirk returning to his face. It was too easy to have this effect on her. He fucking adored it. 

“The Ministry directory?” Iris said, phrasing her answer like a question, “I mean, I thought… I thought I should let you know. That you don’t have to come in tomorrow.”

Draco chuckled lowly. “An owl would’ve done. Or were you just that desperate to see me?”

He wasn't sure it was possible, but her blush deepened. Her eyes returned to his, determined, and his smile grew slightly. She _was_ that desperate to see him. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, so quietly he was almost whispering, “I’m in the middle of something.”

Iris swallowed, her eyes flicking down to the marks on his chest, then further to the towel around his waist. 

“Right,” she said, her voice coming out weaker than usual, “sorry. I’ll go now.”

Her eyes caught on something behind Draco for a second, but he didn’t have time to turn and check what it was before she was turning to leave. And there was no way he was letting her get the last word. 

“Iris,” he called softly. She turned around again, a couple of steps away from him now. “You really should get that blush under control.”

He shut the door before she had a chance of replying, smiling to himself. She looked like a deer in the headlights, even more flustered than she had been at work earlier. And he liked it even more than he had at work, too. 

Then he turned around and saw Pansy standing in the kitchen, her dress back on, her heels dangling from her right hand. 

“Who was that?” She said shortly. 

“New coworker,” he drawled, then, seeing the curious look on Pansy’s face, “can’t stand her.”

“She saw me,” Pansy said, dropping her heels to the ground. Her eyes dropped to his chest, a small smile spreading across her face. 

Usually, Pansy couldn’t stand the thought of someone seeing them together. But then again, she had always liked to claim what was hers. She had gotten dressed and walked right into Iris’s line of sight, just to make sure Iris knew she didn’t have a chance with him.

“She won’t tell,” Draco replied shortly, raising his eyebrows slightly. “I’ll make sure of it.”

They didn’t move back to the couch. Draco pushed Pansy up against the kitchen wall as she shrugged her shoulders out of her dress for the second time. 

“Did you see her face?” Pansy sneered as Draco’s hands returned to her skin, “she looked pathetic.”

“Yeah,” Draco agreed, tightening his hand around her jaw. 

Pansy laughed shortly, meanly. “How does someone even _get_ that red?” 

Draco kissed her to shut her up, letting her moan into his mouth. He didn’t care that she was making fun of Iris - the problem was that her mentioning Iris’s face was making Draco think about Iris’s face. 

The way her eyes had darted around his face, widening as they dropped to his chest. How her cheeks had immediately blossomed a deep crimson. And she had come in person when she could’ve just sent an owl. 

Needless to say, though, Draco did not want to be thinking about Iris while having sex with Pansy. And he wasn't - well, not really. Not in any way that counted, anyway. He couldn’t help thinking of her face if Pansy brought her up, though - that was only human instinct. 

Human instinct that he drove away as Pansy leaned into his neck, her arms tight around his back, still pressed against the wall where Draco was holding her. 

Afterwards, she pulled her dress back up, cast a quick cleaning charm, stepped back into her heels, and left. 

“I have dinner at my parents’ tonight,” she explained, brushing her hair away from her forehead. 

“Give them my regards,” Draco drawled back, pulling on his boxers but not bothering with anything else. 

“You know I can’t do that,” Pansy said, smirking, “but I’ll make it up to you later.”

“Looking forward to it,” Draco replied, walking back into the living room and staring out the window as the sounds of her heels on the floor receded and the door closed behind her. 

He lay down on the couch, feeling sated for the first time in a while. He conjured a cigarette, lighting it with a quick _Incendio_ and taking a long drag. The people who still called him a muggle-hater in the press should see how many packs of cigarettes he had gone through in the past month - he couldn’t hate the people who invented his best habit. 

Letting his head fall back onto the armrest, Draco stared at the ceiling high above him, letting out smoke in condensed puffs. 

After a while, he shut his eyes, trying to perfectly picture the feeling of Pansy beneath him, on top of him, pressed onto the wall in front of him. She had been in rare form today - maybe even better than last week. 

He glanced down at his biceps, gazing at the fading half-moon marks from her nails before letting his eyes fall shut again, thinking of her hands wrapped around him, squeezing, whispering in his ear. 

And then, suddenly, he was thinking of Iris. 

His eyes snapped open. _What the fuck?_ He shook his head, sitting up and blinking to right himself. _It’s just because she interrupted,_ Draco told himself, _it’s just because Pansy made fun of her later._

There were normally no viable reasons to think about Iris and sex in the same context, but Draco shook it off. It made sense - she had barged in on him, threw him off his game for a second. _It would be weirder to think about tonight and leave Iris out._ But that sounded even worse.

Draco groaned, putting out his cigarette by rubbing the lit end into the glass table. He left it there for himself to clean up in the morning - he didn’t need to go to work now, anyway, and he would rather go to bed than keep thinking. 

Because the more he thought, the more his thoughts returned to the look on Iris’s face when she realized what she had walked in on.

There was no reason for Draco to wake up on Saturday morning with a hangover. All he had last night was a glass of wine and a couple of cigarettes. But, for some reason, as he lay in bed and turned away from the window, he felt like he had blacked out the night before.

His head hurt, and his limbs felt heavy as he made his way into the kitchen, groaning at the mess he had left himself last night. There weren’t many good things you could say about teenage-Draco, but at least he was clean. 

Adult Draco gave less of a fuck about appearing orderly - a fact which, on mornings like these, he sorely regretted. 

He ate breakfast, tried a couple of Healing charms to fix his headache (but he had always been shit at Healing), then gave up and resolved to go out. If he was going to feel like shit all day, he might as well turn it into a real hangover tomorrow. 

By the time night fell, Draco’s headache had subsided, but he still felt a cord of tension running through his body. 

When he went out to Diagon, he usually went to the Siren. His reputation no longer meant anything to anyone, but he still had enough money to get one of their private expanding rooms on the top level. 

From there, he could drink in peace without the chance of someone making a fuss about his Dark Mark. It had only happened once, and since then, Draco only went out in sleeves that covered his forearms, but the experience had been horrible enough that he would do anything not to repeat it. 

Tonight, though, for some reason, he walked by the Siren and headed to the Leaky instead. There were always more people there, and tonight was no different. It was packed, almost suffocating, which Draco usually hated. 

But he didn’t feel like being alone in his private room tonight - it would feel too much like drinking alone in his apartment, which was the exact feeling he was trying to avoid. 

As he made his way around the periphery of the bar, looking for an empty table, he caught a couple of girls’ eyes following him—nothing he wasn't used to. 

He slid into a small booth, ordered a couple of shots of Firewhiskey to dull his senses, and leaned back, surveying the people around him. 

The girls who had been watching him stood in a group of three, clutching drinks and laughing to themselves. There were two blondes and a brunette. Draco looked them up and down unabashedly. They caught him, and he raised his eyebrows in response. 

One of the blondes flipped her hair over her shoulders, the other raised her eyebrows back at Draco, and the brunette blushed and looked away. 

He smirked. He wasn't going to hook up with any of them, anyway. He had Pansy now, twice in one week, and he never got with anyone else when he was seeing her that often. It was undeniably fun, though, to play with other girls, to watch them try their best to flirt with him, watch their face fall a bit as he inevitably rejected them. 

His firewhiskey shots materialized on the table in front of him, and he knocked them back in quick succession, adoring the way the hot liquid licked at his throat and trickled down to his stomach, warming him up. 

His gaze fell on the trio of girls again, who were all trying to look at him while pretending they weren’t. Draco toyed with winking at them, but he wasn't in the mood to actually have to talk to anyone, so instead, he let his gaze stray towards the front of the house. 

The glowing bell over the door was shaking back and forth, signaling someone new coming in, though Draco couldn’t hear it over the noise of everyone else’s conversations. 

But he certainly recognized the people who were entering through it. 

Tracey Davis came first, her hands emoting wildly as she spoke. Sebastian Daley followed her, half-listening. 

Then came Theodore and Iris. They were locked in a much more intense conversation than Tracey and Daley’s - Iris nodded along to something he said, then her face turned up in a laugh. 

The sight pissed Draco off. 

It was enough for him to have to see Iris every day at work - the fact that she was hanging out with the likes of Sebastian Daley and Theodore Nott was not to be tolerated.

Especially not when she was shaking her head and smiling, playfully pushing Theodore as the group made their way further into the bar. 

Draco ordered another shot of firewhiskey, drinking it as soon as it appeared. 

He swore that he could hear Iris saying something over the din of the crowd. She was probably talking to Theodore. 

And suddenly he was out of his seat, making his way over to the three girls who had been watching him. They all looked at him in anticipation. He ignored the blondes entirely, leaning into the brunette’s ear. 

“Come with me,” he said, and she agreed at once, following him as he made his way onto the dance floor, navigating past sweaty couples and groups. 

The girl tried to stop moving a couple of times, but Draco didn’t let her until he was right where he wanted to be - in full view of Iris. 

He couldn’t see Sebastian anymore, but she was jumping up and down next to Tracey and Theodore, her hands extended towards the glowing bulbs above. 

God, he wanted to ruin her night.

He turned around, pulling the brunette closer to him by the waist. She ground back against him tentatively. She was no good at it, but he let her.

Eventually, he got bored of standing still in the middle of the dance floor, so he flipped the brunette around and dragged her to him by the back of her neck. She kissed him hungrily - she was better at kissing than dancing, he’d give her that much. 

He tightened his hold on her neck, but she pulled away slightly, so he loosened it again. Fucking annoying when girls didn’t let him do what he wanted. 

He kissed her for a while, picturing the look on Iris’s face when she would inevitably turn and see him with another girl. Her eyes would wander back and forth for a second, then she would turn back to her friends with her cheeks bright red. 

But when he pulled apart from the girl and glanced towards Iris, she was further away than she had been. Sebastian was back now, and she was smiling as he and Theodore spoke.   
She hadn’t seemed to notice his presence at all. 

Fuck. 

Draco pushed the girl off him and left without a word. The hot summer air hit him as he opened the doors, pissing him off even more. 

He hadn’t even wanted to hook up with anyone tonight. 

_Why was he going to such great lengths to piss Iris off?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed :) I have exams next week so there might be a bit of a longer wait between chapters, I hope the next one will make up for it x


	7. Progress Report

_IRIS_

Needless to say, Iris wasn't exactly looking forward to going in to work on Monday. Having Draco as a partner was only tolerable at the best of times - and the situation they were currently in couldn’t qualify as anything better than the absolute worst of times.

Iris could feel her face heat up just thinking about it. 

If only she hadn’t gone over to his apartment. She could’ve just sent an owl to tell him that she finished their overtime assignment - but no, she wanted to gloat. She wanted to see the look on his face as she proved that she was every bit the potioneer he was. 

Unfortunately, in the chaos of the situation, she couldn’t exactly tell him that she had come by to brag about her accomplishments in front of him. Instead, he thought she just wanted to see him. 

It was, to say the least, a sickening thought. 

It was also a thought that Iris couldn’t stop having.

There was something about the way Draco had swung open the door, so casually, his hand wrapping around the doorframe almost as loosely as the towel wrapped around his waist. His cheeks were more flushed than usual, his pupils bigger, his hair messy and hanging in his face. 

His chest, though, was the worst part by far. It was decorated with little love bites, stretching up to his neck, just above his collarbones. Iris was sure that Draco had caught her eyes roaming over the marks for longer than they should have been. 

Suffice to say that the image of him standing in the doorway had been a fixture in her mind, and not just because she was embarrassed to have walked in on him. No, it was somehow worse than that. 

The problem was that she really, _really_ found him attractive. And if it had been bad before, knowing what he looked like in the middle of having sex was making it a lot worse.

Especially because she had seen the girl standing behind him. She was nothing short of gorgeous - all dark confidence and a steady gaze.

Which made Iris’s mounting attraction to him seem even more childish and embarrassing - he had someone else, someone who looked like she was perfect for him. 

Iris avoided looking at her reflection in the lift’s mirrored doors as it rose quickly upwards. She drummed her fingers on her thigh, resolving not to fall for any of Draco’s usual bait as it clicked to a stop. 

“Level nine,” the elevator’s voice trilled happily, “Department of Mysteries.”

The atrium was busier than usual, but Iris didn’t bother to see whether any of her friends were chatting outside. She knew she’d have to go into the Love Chamber sooner or later, and she’d rather get seeing Draco over with. 

She paused for a second in front of the door, taking a deep breath and murmuring the nose-blocking charm so that she wouldn’t waste a second once she got inside. 

She pushed open the door as silently as possible, quickly scanning the room before putting her head down and making a beeline for her desk. 

Luckily, he had his back to her. He was doing something over by the hearts - squeezing liquid out of a bulb and maintaining some sort of charm at the same time. If he noticed her coming in, he made no move to acknowledge it. 

It annoyed Iris to no end how collected Draco always seemed to be, especially when Iris was the complete opposite. 

The image of him casually leaning against his doorframe popped into Iris’s mind unbidden, and she ducked her head even lower as she put her bag down on the floor next to her desk. Her face had been bright red, her speech stilted and stuttered, and he had known just what to do to provoke her while remaining completely calm himself. 

The girl standing behind him seemed like she was cut from the same cloth. She had stood there, her eyebrows slightly arched, expensive-looking heels dangling from her right hand as she cocked her head to take Iris in. 

Iris tied her hair back, flicking her wand slightly to bring her cauldron closer to her. She exhaled, determined to put all her intrusive thoughts about Draco to the back of her head. Today would just be a normal day of work - she hadn’t actually had one so far, but one could always hope. 

Unfortunately, as Iris turned to go to the ingredients shelf, she realized that she had no idea what she was supposed to be doing. 

She stopped in front of her desk, leaning back on it as she chewed her lip in thought. All that she and Draco had done since her first day was experiment with the black market potion. Now that they had sent their findings to Kingsley, she wasn't sure what exactly came next. 

A horrifying thought began to take hold of her: she would have to ask Draco. 

She let her eyes turn to him for the first time since walking in. He wasn't by the hearts anymore - no, he was back at his station, measuring out drops of some golden liquid into little bottles. 

Iris sighed. As much as she loathed every interaction with him, she couldn’t let him think that his little quips about her not pulling her weight were anywhere close to accurate. 

“Draco,” she started, then cringed at herself - did she have to use his name like that?

Draco hummed in acknowledgement - Iris had never heard a hum sound that inconvenienced before. Besides that, he didn’t move at all. His hands stayed steady, measuring out the golden liquid into his little vials. 

“What are we doing?” Iris asked, digging her nails into her palm to brace herself for his response. 

He didn’t answer for at least a minute. Iris was about to try to figure it out herself somehow when he suddenly put down the vial in his hand and turned to face her. 

His eyes unmistakably scanned up her body, landing on her eyes. She dug her nails into her palm harder, determined not to blush. The number of things he did to get a rise out of her was honestly ridiculous - or it would be if it weren’t him doing it. 

“Good morning,” he said. His eyes bored into hers. They were always so intense, _too_ intense, but Iris refused to look away. 

She blinked, finding her place in the conversation again. 

“Yeah, good morning,” she said in clipped tones, “what are we doing?”

“Well, you’re not too polite today,” Draco said, his mouth turning up into a smirk. Iris glowered. She knew exactly what he was doing - well, exactly what he thought he was doing, anyways—playing with her, trying to make her flustered. 

Doing the exact things that had worked so well for him on Friday night. This time, though, Iris was determined not to give in. 

“Are you going to answer my question?” Iris asked, careful to maintain eye contact with him. 

His smirk grew, and he pushed off the desk he had been leaning on, standing up to his full height. It was unfair, really, how tall he was. With a face like that. It was no wonder his ego was so large. 

“No,” he said simply. He turned back around, leaving Iris gaping at his back. 

She shook her head slightly to clear it, considering turning around and trying to figure out what to do on her own. But the more she considered it, the more that would feel like letting him win another argument. 

“Then how exactly am I supposed to do any work?” Iris asked Draco’s back, watching his shoulder muscle shift as he held a vial up to the window’s light. 

He made no move to answer. 

Determined not to let him win, Iris walked across the room, moving to the other side of his desk so that he would have to look at her. She crossed her arms, waiting for him to acknowledge her, but he kept acting as if she wasn't there at all. 

“How am I supposed to do any work if I don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing?” She repeated, a definite tone of annoyance leaking through her words. 

He held up a vial to the window again, turning so that she was facing his side profile. All angles - sharp jawline, high cheekbones. A fitting vessel for his vast superiority complex. 

So as he went to squeeze a couple more drops of the liquid into his cauldron, Iris stuck her hand over it. 

Surprised at how invasive she was being, Draco looked up at her for the first time since turning around. His mouth turned downwards, and his eyebrows shifted his face into a look of unmasked disgust. 

“Were you planning on answering my question?” Iris asked, challenging him with her own glare. 

“Obviously not,” Draco replied. 

He looked back down, but Iris didn’t move her hand from the opening of the cauldron, so he looked up again. 

“Are you really this childish?”

Iris narrowed her eyes. “You’re being childish, not me. You know, it was me who figured out how to use the potion last time, so you’d be better off telling me what we’re doing. If it’s not too difficult for you.”

“Difficult for me? What’s _difficult_ for me is having you around, having to talk to you, look at you - even hearing you move around the room pisses me off.”

“God, you really are an asshole.”

“I don’t care what I am to you as long as you leave me alone.”

Iris bristled, but took her hand away from the opening of the cauldron. It was clear that he wasn't going to tell her anything, and even more clear that he wouldn’t let her have the last word. 

She wasn't sure that she had ever met someone like him. The way he spoke to her - sometimes he wanted to play with her, to make her blush. She supposed she was used to every girl in the world falling at his feet and wanted to make her no exception. 

But sometimes, he spoke to her with cutting words, making it all too clear that he didn’t like her - didn’t want her in the slightest. 

They intersected almost effortlessly - he would draw her in with little flirtations and immediately push her back. Her only explanation for it was that he got off on rejecting her, liked seeing the little bits of hope die in her eyes. 

Not that she hoped for him to want her. Not that she hoped for _anything_ concerning him besides him getting fired so that she could be reassigned to someone she actually liked. Her passing attraction to him was nothing more than that. 

And he clearly wasn't attracted to her at all. 

After staring out the window for a while, Iris decided to make some Amortentia for the stores. It wasn't exactly an assignment, but it wouldn’t be a waste of time, either. 

As she loaded up her ingredients, she thought back to the girl Draco had been with on Friday night. 

She couldn’t help wondering who she was - she and Draco were clearly comfortable with each other. From the way she had stood so confidently behind him, Iris guessed that she was something more than a casual hookup. 

She felt stupid admitting it, but before seeing the girl, she hadn’t even considered the fact that Draco might have someone. He seemed he would be perpetually alone - not for lack of choices, but because he believed he was better than everyone he had ever laid eyes on. 

Iris had never seen him as the type of person who came home to someone. 

But she supposed if he were to go home to anyone, it would be that girl. There was something about her that just felt right for him. Something matched in their stares - they took her in the same way, like they were making a thousand judgements about her deepest insecurities. 

Iris ended up making a couple of cauldrons before the big gold clock on the wall chimed. Draco was out early as usual, leaving Iris behind to get the shelves back in order. 

Before she left, she went over to his desk, intending to figure out what potion he was making. 

It was some gold concoction, shimmering slightly, smelling like something Iris couldn’t put her finger on. Just as she was about to leave, her eyes caught on a piece of parchment underneath it. 

She pulled it out, immediately recognizing Kingsley Shacklebolt’s perfectly sloped block letters. It was a directive communicating exactly what their next assignment was. 

Iris bristled. It was no surprise that Draco had taken the information and hidden it from her. It wouldn’t have been hard to hand her the parchment when she had asked - there was no real reason for him to have been an asshole. But Iris was finding that Draco seemed to do a lot of things without reason. 

She came into work early the next morning, but he was still there before her. He made no acknowledgement of the fact that she had taken the parchment, and didn’t bother her as she laid out her ingredients. 

It didn’t seem to matter much to him what she did after all, as long as she left him alone while she did it. The thought pissed her off - he took it upon himself to bother her whenever he felt like it. 

The potion they were working on was a non-invasive soothing potion that St. Mungo’s had a great need for. It worked by conjuring up memories of moments of love in a person’s life to soothe their heartbeat. 

As she measured out some honey to put in the Amortentia base, Iris vaguely wondered what memories the potion would give her. 

She had been in relationships before, but she wasn't sure if she had ever really loved someone. She had had strong feelings for a variety of boys, slept over at their houses and thought about them when they weren’t around, but she had never felt the earth-shattering love that she had read about her whole life. 

She would have thought it was made up if it wasn't for Sadie and Simon. They woke up together every morning, knew each other inside and out, but their faces still lit up when they saw each other. Iris had known them before they got together, but it almost seemed as if she had made that up - she couldn’t picture them apart, couldn’t fathom how they had lived their lives apart. 

There was no doubt that if they took this potion, they would feel each other’s presence. 

Iris took out a vial, measuring out a portion of the potion and holding it up to the window’s light to ensure it had the right consistency. The same way Draco had been doing yesterday. 

She wondered what memories the potion would give him if he took it. She couldn’t help thinking of the girl behind him, with her smooth skin and dark eyes. He would probably feel her. 

As if her thoughts had summoned him, Draco’s voice cut through the air. 

“Finally figured it out on your own, have you?” He asked. 

Iris considered not replying, but she couldn’t miss a chance to call him out on his hypocrisy. She set the vial down on the desk and turned to face him. 

He was wearing emerald green robes today, a high-necked sweater underneath, looking for all the world like he was on the cover of _Witch Weekly_. Iris caught his eyes and hardened her gaze. 

“No thanks to you,” she said. 

“Try not to crack open the cauldron this time,” he drawled. His words didn’t contain an ounce of sarcasm or jokingness, just cold arrogance. He would never miss a chance to make her feel inferior. 

“Why is it that you can bother me whenever you want, but I can’t make any noise in your direction?” Iris asked, raising her eyebrows in challenge. 

“Because I don’t want you to talk to me. You, on the other hand, are desperate for me to talk to you.” He sneered at her after he finished, sending an extra chord of annoyance through her body. 

Draco loved to throw around the word _desperate_ to describe her. It was particularly infuriating - if she tried too hard to defend herself against it, she would only prove his point. 

“I am nowhere near desperate to talk to you,” Iris said, then turned around and picked up her vial to put back in the cauldron. 

Never one to let someone else have the last word, though, Draco’s voice cut back into the scene. “Oh, no? I suppose that’s why you came by on Friday.”

Iris clenched her jaw for a second, not allowing herself to rise to the bait. It was the first time he had expressly mentioned what had happened on Friday, and she knew that she would only come off as more bothered if she tried to explain herself. 

So instead, she resigned herself to brewing the potion and trying unsuccessfully to banish the image of Draco leaning against the doorframe with the girl behind him out of her mind. 

When she got back to her apartment, she decided she deserved to have a drink. 

Being a potioneer, she was also a gifted mixologist. She had just about perfected the drink she had gotten at the Leaky on that first Friday, and she was working on the turquoise one that Sebastian had been nursing two nights ago. 

She waved her wand, charming the spoon to finish stirring the drink she was making as she made her way over to the window. For some reason, she was feeling particularly nostalgic. She loved London and all her new friends, but something about brewing the potion today was making her think about her most precious, comfortable memories - which had all happened at home. 

Especially with Draco’s presence hanging over her life, everything new had an edge of cruelty and mysteriousness. Usually, it was a prospect that excited Iris, but tonight it all just felt like too much. 

So it was no wonder that she tossed a bit of floo powder into the fireplace to talk to Simon and Sadie. 

“Midway Gardens,” she said - they’d probably still be staying at Sadie’s mother’s house while their new place was being fixed up. For a second, she wanted to try to jump through to their living room, but she knew the Floo Network wouldn’t work over that much of a distance. 

Seeing their faces in the fireplace would have to be enough. 

And as soon as Sadie’s features took shape in the fire, she knew it would be. 

“Hello!” Sadie exclaimed, smiling hugely. It had only been a couple of days since they had last talked, but Iris felt warmed by the sight of her. 

“Hi, Sadie! Is Simon there?”

“Of course I am,” Simon said, his slight French accent cutting through the air as his face appeared next to Sadie’s, shoving her over a little bit. 

“I miss you guys,” Iris said, her sentimental feelings growing. Things had been a lot more simple when her biggest problem in life was having to third-wheel her two best friends and sit through them trying to set her up with random men. 

“We miss you too! How’s everything?” Sadie asked. 

“Everything is…” Iris trailed off, unsure of how to finish the sentence. “Well, everything is fine. Some things are great, some things aren’t.”

“Let me guess,” Simon said, “the things that aren’t great have something to do with Draco Malfoy.”

Iris chuckled lightly, finishing stirring her drink and waving her wand to pull the spoon out. The liquid continued to stir on its own for a couple more seconds before settling. 

“Intuitive as always, Si,” she sighed.

“Well, surely things will get better with him,” Sadie assured, ever the optimist. “Once he warms up to you, I mean. It hasn’t even been a month!”

“Malfoy doesn’t warm to people,” Simon said as if he was stating a painfully obvious fact. 

Sadie scoffed, turning to him with a reproachful look on her face. His face disappeared from the fireplace for a second, which Iris supposed meant that Sadie had shoved him. She felt her smile grow as she remembered the number of playfights of Sadie and Simon’s that she had sat through. 

“No, he’s right,” she said after Simon’s face reappeared, “it’s gotten worse.”

“Worse how?” Sadie asked, leaning further into the fire. 

“Worse like… I walked in on him and his girlfriend.”

There was a second of silence as their faces turned towards each other in hyperspeed. She couldn’t exactly make it out, but she could guess the specific look that they were giving each other - eyebrows raised, mouths ajar.

“ _What?_ ” Sadie practically shouted, turning back to Iris as Simon broke into raucous laughter beside her. 

“I know,” Iris groaned, “Don’t. It was horrible.”

“Wait,” Simon stopped her, his laughter dying down. “Malfoy doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

“Oh, well, they… seemed like they knew each other?”

“What’d she look like?” Simon asked, real curiosity entering his voice. 

“Um… She was tall? Brunette… hair in a sort of bob… she was dressed really nicely.”

“No. Way.” Simon said from the other end. 

Usually, Simon and Sadie were on the same wavelength, but Sadie looked just as confused as Iris felt. Simon, on the other hand, looked like he had just won the lottery. 

“What?” Sadie asked, and Simon’s smile grew as he realized that he had knowledge that nobody else did.

“It has to be Pansy Parkinson,” he said, his eyebrows raised so high Iris was surprised the fire was still showing them. 

Sadie shot Iris another confused look, and she was glad to see that she wasn't the only one who had no idea why this was such a revelation. 

“Who is Pansy Parkinson?” Sadie asked, and Simon’s smile grew even more. 

Over the course of an incredibly drawn-out narrative absolutely filled with tangents, Simon managed to explain that, in their Hogwarts days, Pansy and Draco had dated. This was firsthand knowledge, seeing as he had gone to Hogwarts in his fifth year with the rest of Beauxbatons. 

Apparently, despite being fourth years themselves, Draco and Pansy had seemed to be the de facto leaders of Slytherin house. Both came from well-known, affluent families, both were beautiful in a way you couldn’t look away from, and both had a cruel edge that everyone knew not to cross. 

But after the war, the Malfoys had a falling from grace, whereas the Parkinsons stayed in society’s good graces. Pansy was a well-known debutante, thrice engaged but never married, and one of the last eligible children of the sacred twenty-eight. 

In short, her and Draco Malfoy sleeping together was an enormous scandal that Iris had to make Simon promise three times not to tell anyone before he agreed. 

“I only saw them together for a year, though,” he conceded, “You’d be better off asking Daley - or better yet, Nott. The two of them were friends and everything. Well, I guess they weren’t real friends.”

Iris nodded, about to transfer the conversation to something not Draco-related, when both Sadie and Simon turned their heads. 

When they turned back, both had apologetic looks on their faces. 

“I’m sorry,” Sadie said, “The guy doing the Floo Network at the new place just sent his Patronus over, and my mom said he said that there’s an unfriendly spectre in the chimney. Can we call you back later?”

“Yeah,” Iris said, “It’s late here, though, so maybe this weekend?”

Sadie nodded. “Yeah, sounds good. We really do miss you, you know.”

“I miss you two too,” Iris smiled. 

“Don’t replace us,” Simon grinned, earning another elbow from Sadie. 

“Alright, Iris, we’ll see you - _yes_ , mom, I heard you about the chimney - okay, love you! Bye!”

And with that, Sadie and Simon’s faces disappeared from the fireplace, leaving only a couple of burning logs behind. Iris finished her drink, her mind already racing with the knowledge Simon had given her. 

Pansy Parkinson. Interesting. 

She decided she _would_ ask her new friends about it - she worked with Draco, anyway, so it seemed like information she should know. 

She didn’t even have to wait for the weekend to come to do it. Tracey invited everyone over to her apartment Wednesday night. 

‘Everyone’ ended up being just Tracey, Iris, and Theodore. Sebastian was on a business trip in Paris. It was something highly secretive for the Hall of Prophecies - but not secretive enough for Tracey to stop joking about it being an excuse for him to pick up French girls. 

As they ate, Iris thought about how best to bridge the topic of Draco Malfoy and his more specific relation to Pansy Parkinson. Figuring Tracey would talk the matter to death, Iris decided she may as well ask outright. 

“So,” she said between bites, “What’s this I’m hearing about Pansy Parkinson?”

Tracey’s eyes lit up at once, confirming Iris’s theory. 

“Well, what _are_ you hearing?!” She exclaimed, “I haven’t heard a thing!”

“Something about her and Draco,” Iris said. 

Tracey hummed around her food, handwaving it. “Oh, that’s old news. They used to date back at Hogwarts, you know - it was a whole thing. Slytherin’s royal couple and all that. They broke up after the war ended, though. Draco was on house arrest, and Pansy was a pureblood darling.”

Iris raised her eyebrows. She hadn’t known that Draco was on house arrest. 

“No, I mean recently,” Iris said, and Tracey just about choked on her food. Theodore gave her a huge slap on the back, and she punched him in the arm in response. 

“Recently?! How recently? Where did you hear this from?” She asked, opening her mouth to ask more questions. 

“I… sort of… walked in on them.”

Again, there was a moment of stunned silence. Tracey broke it with another sort of choking sound, then a resounding “ _don’t even try it, Theodore,_ ” as he raised his hand to slap her back again. Then she dissolved into laughter. 

Theodore did not seem to find as much humor in the situation, though his eyebrows were raised almost as high as Simon’s had been. 

“You have to tell us exactly what happened! You have to!” Tracey demanded, grabbing Iris’s arm in a vice-grip.

“Feel free to spare the details,” Theodore said.

“No, don’t spare a thing!” Tracey countered, tightening her hold. 

“I was going to his apartment to tell him that I finished a project we were working on - we would have had to come in on Saturday otherwise, so he needed to know. And I knocked on the door of his apartment…”

“And?” Tracey interrupted, eager to get to the meat of the story. 

“And… he opened his door.”

“That’s it? How did you know they were fucking, then?” Tracey asked, causing Theodore to wince slightly. 

“Well, he was in a towel. I could just sort of… tell. His hair was messy. Then Pansy came up behind him.” Iris took a massive bite of food once she finished speaking, determined to keep that particular image of Draco on the outskirts of her mind. 

“I can’t believe it!” Tracey exclaimed, shaking Iris’s arm slightly. “I mean, I can’t even lie. I’m jealous. What I wouldn’t give to see Draco Malfoy in nothing but a towel, I’ll say that. If only he weren’t such an asshole!”

Theodore rolled his eyes. “I don’t see why everyone finds him so attractive,” he said sullenly. 

“Are you coming out as blind?” Tracey asked, whipping around to fix him with a confused glare.

Iris chuckled at that, and even Theodore cracked a small smile before shrugging. Tracey patted him on the arm. 

“Don’t worry, Theo, we think you’re attractive too. Don’t we, Iris?”

Iris smiled, nodding her assent. The statement seemed to cheer Theodore immensely, and his eyebrows stopped hanging over his brow and returned to their usual place. 

As she walked home - slightly too drunk to apparate - she thought about Pansy again. If it was such a scandal for her and Draco to be together, why would she come up behind him and let Iris see her? 

The only real possibility seemed to be that she wanted to make sure Iris knew she had no chance with Draco, that she would never be able to stack up to what he already had. 

And she didn’t want to. She didn’t want a chance with him, didn’t want to be around him, didn’t even _like_ him. 

But as she pulled her hair up and got into bed, she couldn’t help but feel that if Pansy had meant to make her feel inferior, she had succeeded. The drinks she had had with dinner clouded her head, making her drowsy and shielding her from any real logic as she lay down. 

So when the thought came to her that maybe she _did_ want to stack up to Pansy, in some small way, she didn’t have the brainpower to dismiss it. Instead, she let it stay in her head as she drifted off. 

She woke up late on Thursday morning, her head aching slightly. 

She dragged herself out of bed, casting a healing charm on her temple and hoping that she had remembered it correctly. She pulled on the first pair of robes she found, put her hair up into a ponytail in lieu of a shower, and wolfed down a bit of porridge. 

By the time she got into the phonebooth to transfer her into the Ministry, her healing charm had begun working, and her head felt a lot clearer than it had. 

“Level nine,” the lift crooned, “Department of Mysteries.”

Iris checked over her reflection in the mirrored doors one more time before they opened. It was definitely not her best morning in terms of being put together, but she looked better than she felt. 

Nobody was in the atrium - perhaps because, as she confirmed by checking her watch for the fiftieth time since she had left her apartment, she was almost twenty minutes late. 

She opened the door to the Love Chamber with a tap of her wand, breezing through the entrance hall and pushing open the doors to the room with her head held high.

Draco would never let a snide comment about her go unsaid, and the fact that she was late this morning was just fuel for the fire. 

So, as she walked towards her desk, Iris was already preparing to hear his voice break the room’s silence. She was not disappointed. 

“Kind of you to show up,” he drawled. Not his best line in terms of originality, but she supposed it aptly communicated the casual annoyance he always put on. 

“Thanks,” she answered, wordlessly casting an _Accio_ behind her to summon her ingredients. It was a spell she had been practicing, and she was pleased to see it work. 

“And looking like you just got off a nine-hour train ride, too. Lovely.”

Perhaps Iris should have known by now that there was no topic off-limits to Draco’s insults, but she always found herself a bit surprised when he made fun of the way she looked - something that she and everyone else she had ever met had been taught not to do under any circumstances. 

It made her think, for a second, of Pansy Parkinson standing behind him in his apartment - her beautiful features and easy grace. She really had to get that image out of her mind. 

“Commenting on my looks - how polite of you,” she said evenly. 

He raised his eyebrows in response. “Hardly. I’m commenting on the fact that you wore the same robes yesterday, and your hair’s a mess.”

She looked down for a second, realizing to her horror that she had in fact worn these robes yesterday, too. Fuck. How had he remembered that and she hadn’t?

“Sorry,” Iris said, looking back up at him, “I forgot you like it when I dress up for you.”

He chose to ignore her barb, instead focusing his attention back on the original topic of conversation. “Were you going to tell me why you’re late?”

“I don’t see how that's any of your business. I thought you would rather work alone, anyways.”

Draco smirked. “You’re right, Iris. I would _much_ rather work alone - so you should be careful. I might have to report you to Granger and Shacklebolt.”

There was a slight pause, but it was clear the conversation wasn't over yet. Iris searched for a comeback, but Draco spoke again before she could find one. 

“Tell me why you’re late or I will,” he said. 

“I already told you, it has nothing to do with you.”

“And _I_ already told _you_ that it does. Messy hair and the same robes as yesterday… you didn’t stay at home last night?”

Iris felt herself blushing, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. From his standpoint, she supposed it seemed obvious what had happened. For some reason, though, she didn’t want him to think that she had slept with anyone else. 

“No, I did,” she said, “I just slept in too late.”

“Strange. That’s never happened before.”

“I was at my friend’s. I got home late. I was tired.” Iris shook her head slightly, unsure why she was trying so hard to explain a situation to Draco that was absolutely none of his concern. 

“A friend?” Draco asked, looking slightly amused now, “I take that to mean you were at Theodore Nott’s.”

“Tracey Davis’s, actually,” Iris answered, slightly confused. Why did Draco so sure she would be at Theodore’s?

“Both equal in terms of inadequacy,” he shrugged, turning around. “But I suppose you aren’t exactly spoiled for choice - they’re the only ones who can seem to stand you here.”

“As if anybody in the entire Ministry can stand you,” Iris spit back. 

He didn’t respond. 

For the rest of the day, as her headache slowly subsided and she finished her first batch of the new potion, she found herself bristling in anger every time she heard him moving behind her. What right did he have to interrogate her like that, belittle her and her friends?

Just when she thought that he might be getting better, that he might be easier to be around, he had to go and say a thing like that. 

She breezed out of the room as soon as the gold clock chimed - Draco could clean up the shelves for once - and got in the lift with a couple of people she didn’t know. 

Once she made it to the atrium, though, she found Hermione Granger waiting for her. 

“Hello, Iris,” she said, “I was wondering if you might join me in my office?”

Iris nodded, following Hermione over to a different lift. 

As the lift travelled upwards, they made smalltalk about the hot weather (Hermione thought it would only get worse) and Quidditch (neither of them knew much about it, but Hermione’s husband was betting on the Chudley Cannons for the eighth year in a row). 

Once they entered her office, though, Hermione got much more serious. 

“Listen,” she said, taking a seat behind her desk and motioning for Iris to sit down in front of it, “We usually do Progress Reports for our employees once a year - in May.”

Iris nodded, wondering where this was going. 

“But… well, I supposed that, in your case, that wouldn’t be very productive. You’re leaving in June, after all, so we wouldn’t be able to fix any problems you might be having.”

Iris nodded again. 

“And we all know that Malfoy isn’t the easiest partner. I would hate for… you to have a problem there, so I thought that I would go ahead and talk to you now.”

Hermione took a breath. Every insult Draco had ever fired at her flew through Iris’s head at once as she spoke. 

“So, do you have anything to report?”


	8. The Daily Prophet

_DRACO_

Draco usually didn’t mind Thursday nights. 

They were a buffer - not quite as tedious as most weeknights, but not as fast-paced as a weekend. He only had one more day of work to finish out the week, one more day of having to endure Iris. 

She had gotten worse lately. He wasn't sure exactly why, but everything she did seemed to be ten times as annoying as it usually was. Winding her up wasn't half as fun as usual - every time she blushed, he flashed back to the day last weekend when she had walked in on him and Pansy. 

For some reason, he couldn’t get the image of her wide eyes and reddening cheeks out of his mind. He supposed that part of the reason was because Pansy had made a point of it afterwards. 

The other part of the reason, though… he didn’t want to even begin to consider. 

He shook off his thoughts about last Friday as he flicked his wand over to pour himself a glass of wine. 

But there wasn't much more to think about. Saturday night had been a disaster - what had he been playing at, hooking up with other girls the night after Pansy? He usually never even thought about anyone else for at least three days, preferring instead to lie on the couch or lean back in the shower and replay every moment in perfect detail. 

Whatever. He had been drunk. 

And he couldn’t blame himself for being pissed off at seeing Theodore Nott. There were very few people in the world that pissed Draco off as much as Theodore. He had gotten all the luck after the war ended - he had effortlessly blended back into society, befriended the Gryffindors and Potter-lovers that he had once stood against with ease. 

Draco, on the other hand, had been trapped in his house with his shadow of a mother for two years. He wasn't exactly expecting his old friends (though he supposed they were more like lackeys) to send him an owl every day, but the absolute lack of contact from the outside world had been jarring. 

So when his two years were up and he got his job in the Department of Mysteries, seeing Theodore behave as if he had chosen the winning side all along angered Draco - possibly even more than the public outrage at the Ministry hiring him. 

Theodore could hide his Dark Mark behind long sleeves and shallow friends, but Draco would never be able to. To most people, he supposed, it was all he was known for. 

Seeing Iris so clearly enamoured with Nott - hanging off his arm and his every word, dancing with him and laughing so brightly at everything he said - was not something Draco particularly enjoyed.

Especially not after she came into work wearing the same clothes she had worn the day before. And he didn’t buy her lie about being at Tracey Davis’s, either. 

If Iris started dating Theodore, Draco would have to walk by them talking, watch them move closer at a club, endure him inevitably waiting at the Love Chamber’s door every afternoon. 

Which would be terrible. Just because he didn’t want to see any more of Theodore.

He took another sip of wine, leaning back onto the couch. Today hadn’t been too bad, he recalled. He and Iris only had one conversation, and that was at the beginning of the day. Draco would usually count himself lucky if he only had to talk to her three times, so he supposed that today had been particularly good. 

But it didn’t feel particularly good. 

Something about her was off, almost as if she no longer thought too much about what he said to her. The first few days, she had been skittish, afraid of pissing him off at every turn. She had taken every casual insult to heart. 

Even when she started talking back to him and keeping eye contact, he could tell that she was still hurt by the things he said to her. After she had split the cauldron last week, she had stayed late and finished the experiment on her own just to prove him wrong - which was almost impressive. 

But today - the last couple of days, if he really thought about it - she seemed to brush him off, satisfy the argument with shallow, flippant comebacks. 

She still kept eye contact with him, still blushed if he tried hard enough. If he got really lucky, she would get mad. Draco could always tell when she crossed the line between casual annoyance and actual anger; her eyes narrowed, the blush drained slightly from her cheeks, and she set her shoulders. 

“ _As if anybody in the entire Ministry can stand you_ ,” she had said to him yesterday, her tone rife with hot anger.

He found that, strangely, he liked Iris more when she was angry. She kept her narrowed eyes on his, staring him down defiantly as she shot back at his insults. 

Draco enjoyed her even responses to his barbs well enough - he liked that she could answer back, liked that he was insulting a real person now, not just a meek child. But watching her turn from cool annoyance to real resentment made him feel even better. Knowing that he could frustrate her as easily as he could speak gave him a strange sense of power. 

Iris would call it arrogance. 

So perhaps the reason he felt as though today wasn't as good of a Thursday as usual was because he didn’t get to test his power as often as he would’ve liked. He only got to see her eyes blazing once. 

He finished his wine and levitated the glass into the kitchen, where it touched down on a countertop. He shut his eyes slightly. Perhaps he didn’t like Thursdays after all - he would rather it be Friday so that he would have a better excuse to go to Diagon and get pissed. 

He was torn out of his thoughts by an owl. 

His first thought was Pansy. She usually sent letters to tell him what day she would be coming over, and Draco thought he could probably do well with distraction. But as he opened the window, he recognized the bird as one of the Ministry owls. 

He recognized the handwriting at once, too. He had to endure seven years of it in school - but even if he hadn’t, he supposed that reading the countless memos she sent out to the Department of Mysteries would’ve taught him to remember it. 

It was Hermione Granger’s perfectly wrought cursive. 

_Mr. Malfoy,_

_I request your presence in my office tomorrow morning before the work day begins. Important Ministry business. If you are unable to attend, please send such a response at your earliest discretion. If you will be able to attend, there is no need to respond. Hope to speak to you shortly,_

_Hermione Granger  
Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement  
Assistant Overseer, the Department of Mysteries_

Draco groaned, sending the owl away and tossing the note into his fireplace. He wasn't due to meet with Granger for at least a couple of months. In fact, he couldn’t think of a reason they would need to meet before Progress Reports in May - besides, of course, if Iris quit and he was reassigned to a new partner. If only he could be so lucky. 

He guessed that this meeting would not be good. If Granger wanted to congratulate him on something or ask for specific work to be done, she would send down one of her infamous memos. She didn’t even know much about the work Draco did - the Department of Mysteries was the Minister’s domain and the Minister’s domain only. 

He took a quick shower before getting in bed, little bits of dread stabbing at his stomach. 

Draco liked to think himself a well-adjusted person, someone who was not concerned with the opinions of others and definitely had no acquaintance with hesitation or anxiety. 

In truth, after the war, especially during those two years of house arrest, the feelings of guilt and dread hung over his life in a way he thought he could never truly escape. Having to live in the same house where he had been forced to watch as Voldemort tortured and killed an endless stream of people, including his own father, was sickening. 

He had long since come to terms with the fact that the public would never like him. The people who fought against him in the war would always be his enemies, no matter how many times righteous Harry Potter called for unity. 

He didn’t need anybody to like him. Just Pansy. 

But he did need his job. Not for the money - the Malfoys, despite their fall from grace, still had plenty of Galleons to spare. He needed his job because he wasn't sure who he would be without it. It could be tedious and infuriating, but it was a way to fill his day. 

A way to fill his day that could begin to offset the decisions he had made when he was a teenager, all the terrible things he had done for a family who couldn’t truly save him in the end. 

He knew working in the Department of Mysteries didn’t come close to erasing his past. But it was something. And he needed something. 

Without it, everyone who had declared him a lost cause, who had accused him of remaining a loyal Death Eater in the _Daily Prophet_ and the _Wizard’s Voice_ , would think themselves right. If Draco allowed himself to waste away in Malfoy Manor like his mother, he would be no better than the papers’ worst depictions of him. 

Instead of enduring the little spirals of thoughts his brain was providing him, Draco drank a double dose of Dreamless Sleep, charmed his blinds to rise and wake him up, and fell asleep instantly. 

As soon as he stepped into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement the next morning, his suspicions about the meeting were confirmed. Hermione was standing outside of her office waiting for him. The extra Dreamless Sleep had been a mistake - he had drifted off quickly, but now he felt heavy and a bit lightheaded. 

He sat down in the chair in front of Granger’s desk, trying his best to seem alert as she gave him a quick once-over. 

“You must be wondering why I asked you here this morning,” she said. 

Draco blinked in response. “Obviously,” he drawled back. 

Hermione pursed her lips. She had never liked any rudeness from him, not even in a harmless way. He supposed she had the right to ask whatever she wanted of him - she had, after all, bested him in a war. And punched him in the face third year. 

Reminding himself that he needed to keep his job at all costs, he sat a bit straighter in his chair and tried to shift his focus away from the latent effects of the Dreamless Sleep and onto the problem at hand. 

“I mean, yes. I am,” he corrected himself. 

Hermione gave him another scan, then sighed. 

“Well, as you’re aware, we usually do progress reports in May,” she said, pausing for a second. Draco didn’t fill the silence, preferring to hear the entirety of whatever she was saying before forming a response. 

She exhaled slightly, then continued. “I suppose I should just come out with it,” she said, which didn’t strike Draco as optimistic for his job prospects. “Iris is leaving in June, so I wanted to check in with her and make sure everything is going smoothly.”

Suddenly, the Dreamless Sleep didn’t seem to be affecting him at all. If Iris had something to do with this - if she had reported him - his blood was running icy cold just thinking about it. 

“And… I’m afraid she didn’t exactly have good things to report about you, Malfoy,” Hermione finished. 

There were a couple seconds of silence before she spoke again.

“Does that surprise you?” She asked. It was a good question - one of those ones that got right to the core of the issue. If Draco lied, she would know - Iris had probably told her detailed stories. If he told the truth, he would basically be handing in his notice. 

He had to play it down the middle - not answer the question, but instead ask one of his own. 

“May I ask what exactly she said about me?” He asked, trying to inject earnestness into his tone, “I know I can be a bit cold, but I never meant to offend her.”

There. That should do well. Hermione would probably be pleased that he was self-aware about his frigid demeanour, and the whole thing could blow over. He would make sure Iris never did anything like this again. 

But Hermione’s brows furrowed even more. 

“As she had it, Malfoy, you consistently say things that are specifically designed to offend her. I would be happy to read out a couple of examples that she gave me… if you think you could clear up the _misunderstanding_?” Hermione raised her eyebrows, enunciating the word ‘misunderstanding’ to make it clear that she didn’t believe it was a misunderstanding at all. 

Draco should’ve known she would be on Iris’s side. She had always had a thing for the underdog - she had married Ron Weasley, after all. 

He looked down, attempting to appear chastised as he thought about what his next move should be. Trying to tell more white lies could potentially backfire even further. Besides, Granger was a Gryffindor. She would probably think it honorable if he admitted to… well, he couldn’t exactly admit to spending most of his work days trying to get Iris to quit. He could probably smooth that detail over, though. 

“Right,” he said, “I don’t think it’ll be necessary for you to read them out.”

Hermione raised her eyebrows again, waiting for him to say his piece before she responded. Using his own tactics against him - but then, she had always been smart. At least by Gryffindor standards. 

“I’ve always struggled with change,” he said instead, making eye-contact with Granger as he spoke. “Getting a new partner, especially one who doesn’t understand the… customs of our environment - it’s a big change from working alone. I’ll admit that I probably have offended her on occasion, but I’ve often struggled with differentiating between casual insults amongst colleagues and truly insulting statements.”

Draco paused, worried for a second that he was laying it on too thick. But Granger seemed to be eating it up - her eyebrows had resumed their normal position, her gaze resting on him seemingly without malice. 

“I wish she had come to me…” Draco said, watching Hermione’s face closely for any signs that he should dial it back, “But, of course, I understand why she didn’t. Rest assured, I’ll fix it.”

Again, there was a moment of silence. Hermione glanced at a piece of parchment hovering beside her - no doubt filled with whatever bile Iris had spit at her yesterday afternoon. 

“Well,” she finally said, “I hope you do fix it. You’re an excellent employee, Malfoy, and I know Minister Shacklebolt agrees with me. But if you receive another report like this, you know we’ll have no choice but to seriously question your position in the Department.”

“Of course,” Draco said, nodding. 

Hermione nodded back, then rose from her seat. She glanced at the clock on her wall as she motioned for Draco to get up, too. 

“I’m afraid you’ll be five minutes late,” she said, gesturing at the wall. Draco nodded. 

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention,” he replied, moving towards the doorway. 

Hermione nodded again, though this time her eyes narrowed slightly, as if she was starting to wonder whether Draco might be putting on a bit of a facade. Before she had time to really ponder it, he was through the door and into the lift at the end of the hall. 

The mirrored doors of the lift reflected his stern demeanour as it rose to level nine. He did not care to ‘fix’ his relationship with Iris at all - at least, not in the way Granger had it. 

There was nobody in the atrium when the lift stopped, and he assumed that Iris was already inside. 

Yes, he would fix their relationship - fix it so that she wouldn’t run her mouth off to Granger again. Of all the infuriating things she had ever done, this had to take the cake. Being an incompetent potioneer was one thing, but threatening his job - the same position he had worked for four years - was quite another. 

He cast _Naris Oppilo_ before he went inside, taking out his wand and slashing it through the air so that the double doors leading into the room would swing open of their own accord. 

The gold handles slammed against the marble wall, and, surprised, Iris whipped around to see him come in. 

Draco didn’t bother walking towards his desk, didn’t bother masking his anger. The Dreamless Sleep was still pooling in his stomach and pushing at his head, adding to his annoyance as he made a beeline for her. 

“What the fuck have you done,” he hissed, and Iris put down a vial onto her desk and took a step back from him immediately. Her eyes danced across his face, taking in every angle. Instantly understanding the depths of his anger. 

She met his gaze again. Her eyes were wide. Not angry - unsure. 

“I don’t know what you -” she started, but Draco shook his head and she cut herself off. He didn’t have to interrupt her for her to know when to stop talking. 

“You went to Granger,” he supplied, and Iris looked down, breaking eye contact for the first time. Ashamed - or at least embarrassed. Good. He could work with that. 

“Why the _fuck_ ,” he said, keeping his voice low and cold, “would you go to Granger?”

“She came to me,” Iris replied, an edge of meekness to her voice that he hadn’t heard since her first couple days. Her eyes flicked up to meet his, then dropped again. 

“And what did you tell her?”

“It’s not…” She trailed off. 

“Is it impossible for you to voice a fucking thought?” Draco demanded. “It’s bad enough having to be near you in the first place - but you had to make it worse, didn’t you? You had to run to Granger at the first sign of trouble. As if you don’t have to ask me what to do every fucking day.”

As he spoke, he watched Iris’s demeanour shift. When he started speaking, she was staring at the floor, speaking in quiet tones, afraid to catch his eye. Diffident. Now, she was looking right at him, her eyes blazing - angry. 

For a brief second, Draco wondered if he had meant to do that - if everything he had said to her since coming in this morning had just been so that he could watch her eyes harden and narrow. 

He dismissed the thought and let a couple seconds of silence hang in the air.

“I’ll ask again,” he said, “what did you tell Granger?”

“The truth,” Iris answered at once, her tone devoid of shyness. 

Draco chuckled without humour. He let his eyes drop to her feet and shift up her body, knowing it unnerved her. But when he met her eyes again, she seemed to be even angrier. 

“The truth…” Draco said, “and which truth is that? That you’re utterly incompetent at your job? That you never learned how to deal with criticism?”

One of Iris’s hands curled into a fist. He had to say something biting, had to win the argument, had to make her feel inferior… had to see her face shift as she got angrier - watch her eyes change. 

“Or maybe,” he said, taking a step closer to her for effect, “it’s that you never learned how to deal with your attraction to me.”

It was obvious to Draco that Iris fancied him - he had known since they met. He had played into it, hoping that she would quit out of pure embarrassment. But this was the first time he had said it out loud. 

He hoped that it would surprise her. He hoped her eyes would widen, that her gaze would fall back to the ground, that he could shock her out of her anger only to wind her up again. 

But if it did surprise her, she showed no sign of it. 

“That’s laughable,” she said, her tone notably bitter. “You know what I told Granger. I told her that you’re an absolute dick to me day in and day out. You antagonize me at the drop of a hat, you say ridiculous things to me to break my focus, you push me to my wit’s end - and for what?”

“Perhaps if you stopped breaking cauldrons, you would find me less antagonistic.”

“You know I only broke that cauldron because you were distracting me!”

“Is it my fault you find me distracting?” Draco raised his eyebrows, giving her a cold stare. 

She shook her head, her posture stiffening even more as she began to speak. 

“I don’t find you distracting, Draco, I find you… I find you smug, I find you arrogant, I find you fucking contemptuous. I’ve never met someone with an ego as big as yours, and I don’t understand how you got to be so conceited in the first place! I mean, what do you have going for you? A job where all your coworkers can’t stand you? An apartment you paid for with daddy’s money? A girlfriend who won’t even be seen in public with you - because the public fucking hates you! And for good reason!”

Draco felt his blood running hot, his control over the argument slipping away from him as she spoke, staring him down through slightly narrowed eyes. She had somehow found a way to touch on everything he tried his best not to think about - his father, Pansy, his reputation in the world at large. 

He was always calm while angry, always ready to unnerve and antagonize his opponent until they gave up. He was always collected. But not anymore. 

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he growled, his eyes flashing as he took another step closer to her. 

She didn’t back down, just raised her eyes to keep them on his. 

“Yes, I do. Why would I lie to Hermione - to protect you? No. I’m tired of you. I’m tired of dealing with your superiority complex and your ever-changing moods and the shit you say to me.”

“If you can’t take it, you can fix the fucking issue yourself,” Draco spat back. “Quit.”

“You would like that, wouldn’t you? Desperate to get rid of me. I don’t understand it, I really don’t. If you hate being around me that much, why don’t _you_ quit?” Her eyes darted back and forth across his brow, waiting for him to get the next word in so that she could fire back. 

“You’re infuriating,” he said. His tone was cold again - but this time with true fury instead of feigned indifference. “You don’t understand anything about me. Nothing.”

“I understand you perfectly. You’re -”

“Arrogant, conceited, yes, you’ve made that very clear. You think you know me because you read the old _Daily Prophet_ articles? Because you saw me and Pansy together? Because you hang off Theodore Nott? You don’t know a fucking thing.”

For the first time, Iris looked a little unsure. Her hands relaxed slightly as he spoke, and though palpable anger remained in her eyes, they widened slightly. 

“I know you don’t need this job,” she said.

“Is that what you think,” he replied, more a statement than a question. She didn’t respond, letting the silence hang in the air between him. Waiting for him to speak again.

“This _job_ is the only thing I have. As I believe you said earlier,” he continued.

She was less angry now, more searching. Her eyes were still narrowed, but her shoulders had relaxed and her hands hung unassumingly at her sides. 

“I don’t understand why you even have it. You don’t need it, you could… I don’t know. You could move away. Disappear.”

“You want me to disappear?” He wasn't sure why he was asking. 

“Don’t you? You wouldn’t have to deal with everything people say about you. You’re always complaining about everything - complaining about me. You’d be rid of all that if you left.”

“If you’re trying to make me quit, it won’t work.”

Iris was silent for a second. For the first time in what felt like hours, she broke eye contact. Her gaze drifted down to the tiled floor beneath them. Outside the window, a bird flew by. Iris was always looking out the window. Whenever Draco looked over at her, her eyes always seemed to be trained on the meadow beyond it. 

When Iris looked up again, some of the anger had melted off of her face. 

“I’m just confused,” she said, though her expression seemed less confused and more incisive. Like her gaze was cutting into him, figuring him out. It alarmed him. 

“You’re right,” he said, “It would be easy for me to disappear. I’m sure the public would love that. _Death Eater at large._ The bloody _Prophet_ would have a field day.”

“You keep this job so that people think you’ve changed,” Iris said carefully. There was a bit of apprehension around her, as if this reason wasn't good enough. As if she thought there was a chance that he hadn’t changed at all. 

“I keep this job to remind _myself_ that I’ve changed,” Draco replied. He said in the same tone he used to insult her. 

But something changed. After the words left his mouth, he looked at Iris and found something distinctly different about her, as if someone had blurred her edges. She had softened.

Draco had always enjoyed watching her get angry. He thought about it too much for his own liking. But this - this was something new to consider. Watching the stiffness leave her body, ease into a greater knowledge… knowing that he had the power to make her relax as well as make her angry. 

But he couldn’t allow her to think that he had softened at all. He hadn’t. Her mere presence exacerbated every problem he had ever had. 

“Don’t you ever take shit to Granger again,” he said, the calm anger returning to his voice. 

Iris seemed to take that as a cue to return to her normal state, too. The softness around her dissipated. She raised her eyebrows at him and turned around, picking up a vial full of something pearly. Draco hoped that it had congealed in the time it took them to argue. It would serve her right. 

Despite the unchanging fact that he couldn’t stand her, Draco didn’t bother her for the rest of the day. And when Monday came around, he didn’t bother her either. He dismissed it as worry that she would go to Granger, tell her that Draco had threatened her or something of the like. He wouldn’t put it past her. 

They got into a tentative workflow by Tuesday afternoon - only a couple of snide comments here and there, anyway. Despite her unpredictability - he hadn’t forgotten the cauldron incident and doubted he ever would - she wasn't too bad at brewing potions. 

Instead of working apart and hoping that one of them would come up with results, they began comparing potions and notes in clipped tones. Later, Iris transitioned into the same voice he had heard her use with Theodore at the Leaky Cauldron a couple of weeks ago, which he was disgusted by. 

But he let it slide. To pass the time in which he wasn't antagonizing her, he pictured her face getting angrier - eyes narrowing, shoulders pushed back, brows dropping and a blush decorating her cheeks. 

Always the blush. 

He thought about the way the anger had dropped off her too, that split second in which she had seemed almost soft. 

It was easy to tell what she was thinking. She wore her emotions on her sleeve, never able to truly hide her thoughts. It was the antithesis of Draco’s own upbringing, which had taught him to contort his face into a mask to hide whatever was happening inside. 

It was the antithesis of Pansy, who never betrayed a single emotion through her face. He liked that about her - it kept him guessing. 

He should hate that he could figure out Iris’s every thought. On some level, he did. He found it childish in the same way he found her blush embarrassing - things she should’ve learned to control long ago. 

On another level, though, a level that he was choosing not to confront for the sake of his own mental stability, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

He walked home, letting everyone step off the sidewalk for him to pass. He pictured Pansy at home waiting for him, pictured her shoes by the door, pictured Iris’s face as she had looked up at him. 

He shook his head. The hot July air was interfering with his sanity. 

And speaking of sanity - or lack thereof - his mother’s owl was waiting for him when he got in. He opened the window, letting it in and untying the letter. 

Narcissa’s handwriting was still perfect. There were a lot of things about her that were still perfect. She always dressed nicely, her hair was always neatly styled, and her posture was as straight as it had been on her wedding day. Malfoy Manor looked perfect too - big, narrow windows, huge portraits, not a speck of dust to be found. 

The reality was much harsher. Though his mother liked to keep up appearances - it was a habit, one Draco assumed she found some level of comfort in - she was nowhere near the woman she had been before the war. 

Draco’s relationship with his father had always been complicated, and it had only become more complex after his conviction and subsequent sentencing to Azkaban. 

But he knew that his mother and father’s relationship was much more than an arranged marriage. Especially during the time in which the Dark Lord had resided at Malfoy Manor, they were all that each other had. 

Draco tried not to feel bitter about the fact that he had had nobody. Nobody except Pansy, who wasn't allowed to visit the Manor after fifth year ended. 

Losing Lucius had been the final blow in a long series of blows that had left Narcissa in something other than her right mind. Draco wasn't sure exactly what was wrong with her, and he doubted it could be fixed. 

It wasn't that she was vacant - she just didn’t have the same sharp determination that, in Draco’s mind, had gotten their family through the war. She had lost her edge, preferring to live with the bittersweet memories of her old life than to face her current one. 

The letter was written in cursive that rivaled Granger’s. As always, it detailed the latest news amongst pureblood society. Draco scanned her words halfheartedly. With the exception of Pansy, he was no longer interested in the old Sacred Twenty-Eight and the customs he had been taught as a child. Unlike his mother, Draco was determined to move away from the past. 

But his eyes caught on a name - two names, in fact - that stopped him in his tracks. 

_Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini have been together a month now, which you may already know. As I recall, you used to be quite close with Pansy. They’ve just made the news public. I do hope you will send along your congratulations, as I already have, and…_ ”

Draco stopped reading, then read the first sentence over again. Blaise Zabini? He had been part of their group back at Hogwarts, but Draco hadn’t heard much of him since the war’s end. He had dodged conviction and blended back into the shadows. 

A _month_ , his mother had written. A month. Pansy had been over twice in the past two weeks, and hadn’t seen fit to mention it to him. 

He grabbed a blank piece of parchment and summoned a quill, leaning over to write Pansy a letter. 

_Pansy,_

_I’ve just received the news about you and Blaise Zabini. My mother tells me you’ve been together for a month. My congratulations._

_Yours Sincerely,  
Draco Malfoy_

It was short, and to anyone else's eyes it would look like a brief, impersonal note from an old friend. To Pansy, though, it would read exactly the way he wanted it to. It was curt enough to raise an eyebrow, with specific mention of the length of time for which she had apparently been seeing Zabini. With a ‘yours sincerely’ tacked on the end to remind her who exactly _she_ belonged to, too. 

He sent his mother’s owl away, telling it to come back to Draco with Pansy’s reply. He would write his mother back in the meantime, assure her that he would come by the Manor soon even though seeing his old family home threatened physical illness. 

Pansy’s reply came quickly. 

_Dear Draco,_

_Thank you for your kind letter. I’m glad to hear that you’re happy for me and Blaise. We cherish your words._

_Sincerely,  
Pansy Parkinson_

Draco read it again as he tacked the letter back to his mother onto the owl and sent it away once more. It was clearly meant to spite him - she wanted to get a rise out of him, make him jealous in that way she had always liked. 

He supposed jealousy was a two-way street. She had been fucking Blaise for a proper month, and he had been feeling guilty for hooking up with other girls when she wasn't around - he hadn’t fucked anyone last weekend out of blind loyalty to her. 

So he found himself at the Leaky on a Tuesday night. He could try the Siren, but the people there were less likely to be piss drunk on a Tuesday and would probably be less willing to come home with him. 

He was three shots deep before he found a girl he could tolerate looking at, and he was sure the alcohol was contributing greatly to her attractiveness. He took a couple more shots, watched her watching him. 

He was itching for a feeling that he wasn't getting, even when he grabbed her arm and took her outside, even when he made her tell him where her apartment was so that he didn’t have to deal with her at his. 

There was something left unfulfilled even as he fucked her. She was looking at him wrong. He could tell exactly what she was thinking, but there was no joy in it. She wasn't angry, wasn't soft around the edges. She wasn't much of anything. 

She was trying to put on for him, but it wasn't much of a show. 

He left right after he finished, and didn’t bother to get her name before he apparated back to his. Still supremely unsatisfied, he considered getting off in the shower, but he was tired. 

So he just fell asleep.


	9. Thin Ice

_IRIS_

It was funny how much could change in a week. Last Wednesday, Iris had woken up dreading going to work and having to deal with Draco for the entire day. 

This Wednesday, though, it didn’t seem quite as gargantuan of a task. 

She doubted that she and Draco would ever be able to work together without a couple of sarcastic comments being thrown across the room (mostly coming from his side, though Iris could hold her own). But in the past two days, they had found a way to work together. 

As angry as he had been that she had reported him to Hermione, she supposed it was worth it. He was more wary of insulting her now, she could see that much.

But their argument had also given her insight into who he truly was. The fact that he wanted to keep this job as proof to himself that he had changed was the only thing she had learned about him that she had liked. 

And she found that brewing potions is easier when you have someone else’s notes and insights to compare yours against. 

So, when the lift stopped on the ninth level and Iris walked out into the atrium, she was feeling more optimistic than she had in a while. 

Opening the door to the Love Chamber always filled Iris with a sort of joy. The light pouring in from the window, the meadows and the mountains beyond it, the big gold clock and the falling petals and the old paintings that stared down at her as she made her way across the room felt as though they were welcoming her back. 

It was rare for her to get into work before Draco - in fact, the only other time it had happened was last Friday, and he had only been late because he was in a meeting with Granger. 

She took her time setting her things down, and muttered a quick _Incendio_ to start heating up her cauldron. She pulled out her notes, skimming the margins to go over the properties that she had started to figure out the night before. 

A couple of minutes went by as Iris finished heating up the mixture she had left yesterday. She pulled up her hair and added a pinch of the final ingredient, stirring counterclockwise. The potion changed color, becoming a sort of dark green. Squinting, she added another pinch, and it promptly lightened into the green that she and Draco had decided it should turn to. 

She noted the extra pinch at the bottom of her page of notes, then turned to the big clock on the wall. She had only been at work for fifteen minutes, but being all alone in the Love Chamber was strange. She wondered how Draco had gone through with it - but then, he had always been a solitary creature. He made sure to remind her of that at every chance he got. 

As if called by her thoughts, Iris heard the doors to the Chamber swing open. She gave a final stir to the potion as the thought crossed her mind that when Draco entered, he usually swung open the doors with a flourish, letting them bang on their hinges. 

He did it to bother her. But he hadn’t done it today. 

“I’ve finished the -” she began, looking up from her cauldron as she spoke, but the look on Draco’s face cut her off. 

“Are you alright?” She asked instead. 

He did not look anywhere close to _alright_. He usually froze his face in a blank expression that betrayed none of his inner thoughts. When he was trying to make Iris feel inferior, he sometimes adopted a passing look of condescension or annoyance. 

Today, he wasn't bothering to hide what looked like cool rage. 

“Am I alright?” He said, mocking her, “fuck off, would you? It’s ten in the fucking morning, I shouldn’t have to hear your voice til at least noon.”

Iris felt her eyebrows shoot up her face. The past couple of days had been tentatively good between them, but even before, he hadn’t spoken to her like this. 

There was a certain gait to his speech that Iris didn’t quite recognize. She was used to hearing him puncture each word in clipped, curt tones. Now he was skimming through syllables, the rhythm of his voice changing. 

She narrowed her eyes. 

“Are you drunk?” She asked. There was no reason for him to be drunk on a Wednesday morning, but she couldn’t think of another reason for his voice to sound like that. 

He flipped her off in response, turning his back to her and walking over to his desk. 

“Hungover. Fuck off me, I’m not in the mood for your pathetic attempts at flirtation.” He was being more cutting than usual, not bothering to hide his insults in witticisms. Not even bothering to find a source for them. 

Iris watched his back for a second, his muscles stitching together as he shrugged his robes off and revealed a slightly wrinkled button-down underneath it. She hadn’t ever seen him in anything less than perfectly tailored clothing before. 

Tearing her eyes away, Iris looked back towards her potion. She put out the flames with a quick wave of her wand, casting wordlessly so that Draco wouldn’t latch on to the sound of her voice and find some other way to insult her. 

There was, to put it lightly, a lot going on this morning. 

Iris knew that Draco was supposed to be trying to be civil so that she didn’t go back to Granger. She knew that he knew that they had gotten their best work done in the past couple of days. And yet he was jeopardizing it. 

The only thing she could think was that something must have happened to him. Something that would explain the late entrance, imperfect outfit, and attitude that she hadn’t seen from him for weeks. 

He always seemed to like pissing her off, but this felt different. There was no playfulness behind his words, no challenge.

She wasn't sure what would possess him to go out on a Tuesday night and get so drunk that he would still be feeling it the next morning. 

From across the room, Draco knocked something off his table. It startled Iris out of her thoughts and back to her work. 

She had finished brewing the potion, so the next step was to put it in vials and leave it out before making another batch. But she had wanted to check with Draco and see if theirs had the same consistency - they were using Mangrove roots from different countries, which could lead to a slight variance between the brews. 

She turned around, watching Draco grab the edge of the table in a vice-grip. She probably shouldn’t provoke him. She stared at his hands for a second longer, noticing that he hadn’t taken off his rings. 

“Draco,” she said without thinking, “take the rings off before you start brewing, they’ll fuck it up.”

He wheeled around. None of the rage had melted off his face. 

“Say one more fucking thing,” he growled. “I don’t care if you go to Granger, I don’t care if you go to the fucking Minister. I don’t want a single word from you today, not one.”

Iris dug her nails into her palm, trying to stop herself from looking shocked. 

“You still need to take off the rings. And we need to compare potions. You’re not -”

He cut her off. “Haven’t I already told you to stop fucking throwing yourself at me? You don’t stack up by a mile to…” he trailed off, the anger on his face deepening. “Just stop. You’re the one who blew the place up, not me.”

With that, he turned around. His hand was still gripping the edge of the table, holding it so that his skin was digging into the wood. 

Iris tore her eyes away. Usually, she would get pissed off by his suggestions that she was attracted to him, as unfortunately true as they may be. But it really did seem like there was something wrong with him today. 

Deciding to try one more time, she turned around. 

She grabbed her notes, walking across the room towards his table. Hearing her shoes against the marble floor, he turned before she even made it halfway to him. 

“What part of you thought _fuck off_ meant come over here?”

“Well,” Iris said, her eyes darting away from him as she tried to figure out how best to phrase it. “Something is clearly… going on with you. And we need to work together. So…” she returned her gaze to him. “Did something happen?”

He glared at her, pure hatred, then turned heel and left the room. 

Iris quickly surmised that she shouldn’t go after him. She wondered what could possibly be making him so angry - was this some sort of anniversary? 

It was the middle of July, so well after the final battle of the war had ended. But maybe he had had some court date, or one of his parents had. Or maybe… maybe it was something to do with one of his friends. Or something. 

She figured it was worth knowing, and the only person she could think to ask was Theodore. 

Iris was admittedly clumsy at using her Patronus to send messages, but it was the only mode of communication that could work during the work day. Focusing on the memory of the day she had graduated Ilvermorny, standing side-by-side with Sadie and waiting to get into their flying carriage. 

“ _Expecto Patronum_ ,” she whispered, glad to see her lion take form in the center of the room. She spoke her message to Theodore, concentrating on sending her words into its silvery form, and sent it off. 

Theodore’s Patronus materialized in front of her not five minutes later. She was amused to see that it was an adder - it was just like him to have a snake Patronus. Slytherin through and through. 

“Your Patronus is a lion?” The adder said in Theodore’s voice, sounding slightly amused, “I’m not sure we can be friends anymore. By the way, you’re kind of shit at this. I could barely understand some of what you said,” he drawled, laughing. Iris smiled, waiting for his answer. 

“Anyways, no, there’s no anniversary that I know of today. But if you’re wondering why he’s so pissed off, it might be worth having a look at the _Prophet_.”

With that, the snake dissipated. 

A second later, it reappeared. Iris raised her eyebrows. 

“It’s just occurred to me that you probably don’t have a copy of the _Prophet_ with you, otherwise you’d probably know yourself,” Theodore said through the snake’s mouth, “So… basically, Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini were spotted out together. Apparently they’ve been a thing for a while, but, you know, you can’t really believe everything you read. Anyways. Zabini was in Malfoy’s gang at school. And Pansy… well, you know. I hate to side with him, but I think I might be pissed off too.”

There was a pause. 

“Right, well, that’s it. Oh - Sebastian and I want to do drinks Friday at the Leaky, but Tracey wants to do Saturday. I say we do both, but she’s being a girl about it, so we’d like you to talk some sense into her.”

But Iris wasn't really listening to the last part. 

So Draco’s girlfriend had been fucking his best friend for a month without telling him. A girlfriend that he apparently was so devoted to that he didn’t give a fuck that she’d been through three engagements. Or that she would never admit to dating him in public. 

For a second, Iris felt a flicker of anger on Draco’s behalf. She quickly dismissed it. 

Iris had been through a few breakups herself. She and Michael had grown apart, Davy had moved across the country, and Devin had cheated on her. She had been sad about all of them, more than a little pissed off about Devin - but none of those relationships had been anything close to what she imagined Draco and Pansy had. 

They’d been through decades together, a war, trials and arrests and countless secrets. 

She had gotten a look at them firsthand. One look at Pansy hovering over Draco’s shoulder had destroyed her flightess, disconcerting fantasy of anything ever happening between her and Draco. 

They fit together. They had the same blank expressions, same eyes - hers dark, his light, but both pairs equally as cold and piercing. Pansy had a glamour to her that Iris doubted she could even half. 

What had Draco said earlier? _You don’t stack up by a mile_. No. Iris couldn’t dream of matching the girl he had. 

The girl she supposed he had just lost. 

Iris imagined she would be angry, too. If she were him. 

So when he came back into the room, slamming the doors open like normal and glaring at her, she made no move to confront him. 

“What, nothing to say?” He asked. 

She looked up. Despite the fact that he was facing the light of the window, his eyes seemed to have darkened. They were narrow. Challenging her. He was trying to make her angry. 

But there was no way she was going to rise to the bait now. She just had to make her way around him for the rest of the day - the rest of the week - and hope that he took the weekend to get over Pansy enough to be able to work. Perhaps that was a bit cold of her. 

Perhaps she just didn’t like thinking about Pansy that much. 

She shook her head in response, hoping he would go back to his table. He did. 

For almost ten minutes, they worked in silence. Iris didn’t mention it aloud, but she noticed that Draco took off his rings before he started. She wondered if the potion he was brewing would be usable. Perhaps anger sharpened his senses - he did seem like the type. She felt that way sometimes - like everything she did came out better when she was mad. 

He turned around. 

“I can hear you moving. Why aren’t you saying anything.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to talk to you?” Iris said back, a question in her tone. 

“I don’t,” Draco returned. “But you’ve never cared about that before. You always have something to say, don't you? Can’t let me get away with having the last word.”

There had been plenty of times Iris could think of where he had gotten the last word, but she didn’t bring them up. Instead, she narrowed her eyes slightly, taking him in. He rearranged his face, mixing in some superiority with his anger. 

“I don’t have anything to say,” Iris said evenly, trying to leave it at that. She broke eye contact, turning away. 

But she couldn’t help but look up again as she heard his footsteps making their way across the room. 

He was right in front of her, sending a little jolt through her despite her best efforts to stay passive, to not engage him. He stared down at her, eyes stormy, jaw sharp. Hands curled at his sides.

“You do have something to say,” he said. 

“No.” Iris shook her head. Her voice came out quieter than she meant it to. 

“You always have something to say,” Draco returned. His voice was lower than usual. Gravelly and stained with anger. “Fucking say it.”

“I don’t.”

His eyes bore into her, unmerciful with their glare. She felt it all at once - he wanted her angry. He wanted to make her mad. He wanted the satisfaction - _needed_ the satisfaction. He needed to use any power he still had. 

“Everything about you pisses me off,” he said, and somehow his voice was even lower, even quieter. “Everything. From the day I met you, I knew it would. You can’t do a thing right, you never have - it’s no wonder the only people who can stand you are Nott and Daley. And for me to have to come in everyday and see you - have you go talk shit to Granger as if you have _any_ fucking right… I can’t stand you.”

She had heard all those words before - he had already used them to insult her, used them to make her angry. She would be lying if she said that hearing them didn’t make her blood run hotter, but she was determined not to give him the satisfaction.

“If you don’t want me to bother you, go back to your table and start working.” Her words had a bit of an edge to them. She watched him register them, watched his eyes squint, and for a second she felt stupidly brave. 

“Unless something’s keeping you here?” She asked 

He laughed outright. It sounded more like a growl. “Nothing is keeping me here.”

“You want to make me mad,” Iris said, trying to grab the upper-hand of the conversation for once. “You want to make me mad so that you know you can still do it.”

There was a silence. Just as she was about to speak again, Draco broke the silence himself. 

“I could make you angry whenever I want. I could make you sad, I could make you happy, I could make you jealous. I could do anything I wanted to you and you’d thank me. You’d go home and get off to the thought of me saying a single word to you.”

And she couldn’t help but be mad at that. 

“Why do you always say shit like that?” She said, trying to keep her tone as even as possible. 

He took another step towards her. So close. She could smell his cologne, something dark and expensive. She wanted to take a step back, but she’d hit the table. And she couldn’t move. 

“It’s true. We both know it,” he whispered. “You’d be on your knees for me in a second if I wanted you.”

_If I wanted you_. So he didn’t. Fuck. Not that she cared. 

“I wouldn’t touch you,” Iris said back. She didn’t mean to be whispering, but she was. The corner of his mouth turned up into a slight smirk. 

“You wouldn’t touch me...” he repeated slowly, his eyes darkening even more now that he was turned away from the window. 

“No,” she breathed. 

His hand moved quickly. It wrapped around her wrist. Iris startled, trying to pull away from him, but he held fast. 

“Get off me. What the fuck are you doing?” Iris tried to shake her wrist out of his grip, but gave up quickly. He was holding her tighter than he had been holding the edge of the table. Fuck. Stop thinking about his hand. Her head was spinning. 

He tugged her wrist to him, watching coldly as she stumbled forward with the force of it. Her eyes darted back and forth across his face, trying to figure out what he was thinking. She couldn’t.

“Is this about Pansy?” She asked. It was all she could think to say. 

“What the fuck do you know about Pansy?” Draco returned. His tone was still cold. It was more of a statement than a question. Had he forgotten?

“You know I saw you together. When I was…” She trailed off, exhaling sharply as he somehow managed to tighten his hold on her wrist. 

“Let me go. I won’t tell anyone,” she tried to pull her wrist back to her side, not liking the way his hand fit around it. No - not liking the way it made her feel. Like… like she no longer had control over the situation. No control at all. 

“Tell anyone?” He asked. There was no way to tell what he was thinking. His voice betrayed nothing. His expression betrayed even less. 

“I don’t -”

“I don’t give a fuck if you tell anyone,” Draco cut her off. She blinked. Surprised. “You know how you looked that day? The way you looked at me?” He asked. “And you’re trying to tell me you wouldn’t beg for it?”

If there had been a charge in the air before, this was something else. All her nerves were on edge. Everything felt different, strange, like something was about to happen. But nothing could happen. Not between them. Not ever - he had Pansy, loved Pansy, he was an asshole, he hated her. This would all be a joke in the end. It had to be. Some cruel thing for him to hold over her. 

So she should pull away. Tell him to stop. 

But his other hand was moving. To her neck. Wrapping around it. His thumb tilted her jaw up, forcing her to look up at him. 

“You want it,” he said. Fuck. Yes. No. “Beg.”

She tore her eyes from his, reaching the hand he wasn't holding behind her. She needed to grab the table, needed to step away from him and center herself. Get ahold of herself. 

But as soon as she stepped back, he stepped forward, boxing her in. His fingers were pressing harder into her neck now, his thumb forcing her to look back up at him. Take him in. 

“If this is just you trying to make me quit...” Iris whispered.

“Yes,” he breathed back, and he was closer than he had been. Definitely closer. “Fucking quit. I’d like nothing more.”

Her eyes were wide open, but his were half-lidded now. His hands holding her wrist to him. Wrapped around her neck. Pushing in. His head moved down. She caught a whiff of alcohol on his breath. _You can’t, you shouldn’t, you can’t_ , she thought, but she was. She would let him. 

Then the gold clock on the wall chimed its end-of-the-day bell. 

Draco released his hold on her so quickly it was almost as if he wasn't there. But she could still feel the ghosts of his fingers. 

Frozen in place, by the time she looked up he was halfway to the door. 

Then he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I do better on a schedule so from now on expect updates on mondays and thursdays, also if you subscribe you should get emails whenever I update so that you know! lol remember when I used to update everyday wtf was I on 
> 
> hope you enjoyed xx and thanks for comments/kudos as always I love em


	10. Withdrawal

_DRACO_

Draco slammed the empty glass down on his counter. The firewhiskey burned through his body, a trail of lava from his tongue to his stomach. It stung his nose, but he had never been one to wince. 

He liked the way it warmed him up, stretched through his body and lit up every nerve. He liked the way it numbed everything else that was happening, forced him to stand in the kitchen and feel his feet on the floor instead of wandering back into memories he would rather not return to. 

At some point, if he kept drinking, he would lose the feeling of his feet. He would lose his presence in the kitchen and resurface at Hogwarts or the Manor or the Ministry in his mind. But by the time that happened, he would be too drunk to care, too drunk to remember that he had thought about it in the morning. 

That was what he was aiming for tonight. There was a lot that had happened in the past week that he would rather not think about. 

He knocked back another shot. If Pansy could see him now, throwing back half a bottle of whiskey on a Wednesday night in his kitchen... she would love it. She would love the knowledge that she could do this to him. She had always wanted to be the object of his every emotion - his love and desire, but also his jealousy and anger. 

He gave her what she wanted even when he didn’t mean to. 

His fourth shot didn’t go down as easy as the other three. He always reached a point where the warmth felt less like it was waking him up and more like it was poisoning him. It probably _was_ poisoning him. He took another. 

Pansy and Blaise being together was a blow that he hadn’t been able to stomach. He couldn’t foresee a scenario in which he would ever be able to stomach it. 

Perhaps he had gotten too used to Pansy being single for the past three months - coming to see him more often and staying for longer when she did. Or maybe he should just go to Maulace Hill House and punch Blaise in the face. He would deserve it. 

The drink curled in his stomach, its fumes winding up his nose as the drink slowly invaded his body, blocking out the outside world. 

He grabbed the bottle by the neck, considering casting a Sticking Charm so that he didn’t drop it. He dismissed the thought quickly, but tightened his hold. The metal of his rings clanked against the glass as he brought it up to his mouth for another swig. He should stop. He had already stopped keeping track of how many shots he had taken. 

He slumped down on the couch, and his mind immediately conjured up the image of Pansy lying on its cushions beneath him, miles of her neck on show, her long eyelashes fluttering closed as he touched her. 

He turned over. The firewhiskey was supposed to be helping him get his mind _off_ Pansy, not back on her. 

Draco hated thinking about that night, which was uncharacteristic of any night he had spent with Pansy. He supposed the reason he tried to keep it out of his mind was that Pansy hadn’t been the only person to visit his apartment. 

For a second, Iris’s face flashed through his mind, eyes flitting over his body with a confused gaze that became realization. Her blush, the way her hands had hung, and _fuck, really_ , he needed to stop this thought before it gained any real traction in his mind. 

But he supposed it was too late. Because in truth, Draco’s uptick in firewhiskey consumption didn’t rest solely on Pansy Parkinson’s shoulders. 

It rested quite a bit of its weight on the events of the particular Wednesday that he had just lived through. 

And the fact that he had come within an inch of kissing Iris Knightley. 

Which was sickening. 

He didn’t know how he had allowed it to get to that point. He had thought that he was just hungover, but as he went about his day, it became quite apparent that he was still carrying a notable amount of alcohol in his system. 

Everything about her was grating on him - every sound, every movement, every word. 

He had felt some strange need to make her angry, like a pathological desire eating him from the inside out. He just needed to prove to himself, after losing Pansy in some sense, that he still had some sort of power. Some way to distinguish himself from Iris, from everyone he considered himself better than. 

She had told him so. _You want to make me mad so that you know you can still do it._ She hadn’t been far off. Well. She hadn’t been off at all. 

And he had done it. He had made her angry. As much as she tried to disguise it behind even tones and determined eye-contact, he had watched her harden, watched her eyes flicker with rage. 

And then he had pushed too far. 

He knew what things would make her angry, and he knew how to play into them. But there was a line between drawing her in to piss her off and just drawing her in. A line that he had crossed. 

There hadn’t been a sound in the room except her breath, and the thought had crossed his mind that if he kissed her, she would taste last night’s alcohol on his breath, she would taste the girl that he had fucked and left, she would taste every bit of bitterness and regret. And she would like it. She would breathe it in, whatever it was, as long as she knew that he would keep giving it to her. 

Her nose had brushed his cheek. Barely, lightly, but he had felt it, and it hadn’t snapped him back to reality. 

It had taken the gold clock chiming on the wall for him to realize that something was wrong and pull off her. He had glanced at her after his hand left her neck. She was staring into space below him, looking at the place where his hand had caught her wrist. 

Fuck it all. But withdrawal from Pansy had always made him do stupid things, and firewhiskey had always made him do stupid things, though he couldn’t remember if he had been drinking firewhiskey or wine last night. 

Blaming shit on Pansy was routine for him, comfortable. Emotional duress. Of course he would become unhinged after realizing that she had been lying to him, seeing one of his former friends behind his back for a month. 

He slammed the bottle of firewhiskey down on the table so hard that a bit sloshed up and flowed over his hand in tiny droplets. 

It wasn't over between them. If Pansy showed up at his door now he would let her in, he would let her eyes rove over the mess of his kitchen and the bottles in the sink. He would give her the satisfaction, give her the knowledge that her withdrawal from him had caused a little bout of insanity.

He wouldn’t tell her about Iris, though. He sometimes told her about other girls. He liked watching her get a bit jealous and play it off. He liked the way her face rearranged, for just a second, into something unsavory. 

He liked the satisfaction of making her prove herself better than them. Pansy liked it too, probably, or else she let him do it because he wanted to, which was just as good. 

But he wouldn’t tell her about Iris. That was different. For no discernible reason, he resolved that Pansy could never know that Iris’s nose had brushed his cheek. 

In truth, there was a very much discernible reason, but Draco was content to ignore it in favor of the firewhiskey in his veins. It had stopped coursing through him and turned into some sort of leaden thing that was weighing him down. 

He wasn't sure how it had gotten into his eyelashes, but they were heavy too. He couldn’t sleep, though. He didn’t want to. He got up and walked back into the kitchen. 

He knew he needed to deal with it, whatever had happened, but dealing with it would mean recognizing it. Recognizing the fact that it hadn’t been her, he couldn’t blame this on Iris. It had been him. 

He leaned over the sink, gripping either side of it and letting his hair fall onto his forehead. He reached out blindly for the bottle of firewhiskey but remembered he had left it back by the couch. 

Hours later, Draco found himself still in the kitchen, on the floor now. Maybe it had been a mistake to drink, because he felt inescapably like he was dying. A part of him had died, he supposed, the part of him that could unequivocally love Pansy. 

But that part of him had been dying for a while, whether or not he wanted to accept it. That little piece of him had once been all of him. The boy who had gone to Hogwarts and sat with her on the train and lay his head in her lap and fucked her senseless by the lake. 

Draco felt incredibly disconnected from that boy. He knew that he had once been him, he knew that every other person in the world probably equated them, but in truth thinking about his younger self felt like thinking about a different entity entirely. 

Pansy had done a lot of shit to him. He had done a lot of shit to Pansy. But sitting on the cold tiles of his kitchen floor with his back against the sink, this felt like some sort of final straw, the thing he could not abide. 

He would abide it, though. If she wanted to come over again he would probably let her. He would definitely let her. She had broken him in so that he would have to love her even if he wasn't sure he could. No matter what she did, she would find him waiting. 

The firewhiskey festered inside him and burned away at his throat as he slumped backwards. He fell asleep like that, against the sink, staring at the wall he had pushed Pansy up against two weeks ago. She had been seeing Blaise when he did that. 

The light woke him early, careening through the windows in the lounge. He could tell he was still drunk, he could feel the remnants of the alcohol in his chest. His head was throbbing. He had work, had to deal with Iris. 

His strategy ended up being to pretend like nothing had happened. He resolved to do so in the lift on the way down to level nine. He was alone - he usually was, probably because other people didn’t want to be near him. 

His reflection in the mirrored doors was uninviting and he refused to look at it. 

He wasn't late, but Iris was already in the room by the time he got in. 

The light coming in from the windows was far too bright, so he looked away, making eye contact with the gold clock on the wall. He heard Iris take a step, but she didn’t say anything. He sighed softly in relief. 

He really didn’t think he could take it today. He had been angry yesterday - angrier than he was now, the news about Pansy and Blaise had been more fresh - but today he didn’t really feel like anything. 

He had no idea what they were supposed to be doing - some sort of potion, but the cauldron on his desk was empty and he wasn't sure where he had left his notes. He grabbed the edge of the table, pressing his palm into the cool wood to try to ground himself. 

He couldn’t be expected to work today, not when he had spent all of last night coming to terms with the imminent death of a part of himself, but he couldn’t exactly tell the Ministry that.

Reluctantly, he turned around, hoping to catch a glimpse of what Iris was doing to jog his memory. 

Instead, he found her staring right at him. 

She caught him off guard, which he hated, and he was much worse at keeping a blank expression when he was drunk. He tried to mask his surprise by shutting his eyes quickly, but when he opened them again the light flooded back in and made him feel even more disoriented. 

He wasn't sure he had ever seen this specific expression on Iris’s face before. She wasn't confused or angry or neutral, she wasn't happy like she had been with Theodore. She seemed almost expectant, but if she was expecting him to do anything she was in for a rude awakening. 

In the time it took him to register her face, he realized he had been looking at her for too long to play it off. It would be strange of him to turn back to his work now.

But there was nothing for him to say to her. Nothing he wanted to say, anyways. He refused to acknowledge what had happened the last time they had spoken. 

For a second, his eyes drifted down to her wrist, and his fingers twitched slightly as if to remind Draco that they had held her, they knew the feeling of her. He did not want to be reminded. 

“You’re drunk again,” Iris said. She wasn't speaking loudly, but the sound of her voice cut into his mind, exacerbating his headache. 

He really should have paid more attention when Flitwick had been going over Healing Charms so that he could fix his head. They probably learned them during sixth year, though, and he hadn’t learned much of anything then. Well, not him. The other person that had occupied his body from ages eleven to eighteen hadn’t learned that much during sixth year. 

He supposed that if people knew that he didn’t consider his teenage self and his current self the same person, they would probably hate him for it. They would call it escapism and say he was trying to alienate himself from his past so that he didn’t have to take responsibility for his actions. 

In truth, that was not the case - at least not consciously. Draco did take responsibility for all the things he had done, but he felt as though he was bearing the burdens of a stranger rather than a younger version of himself. 

Anyways. Iris knew he was drunk, and she had said it out loud. 

There wasn't much to say to that. So he just said: “Yeah.”

There was a spot of silence. Iris stared at him. It occurred to Draco that he could have turned around in the midst of it, gone back to pretending to work, but the thought didn’t come until it was too late. He returned her stare and tried to pretend that his eyes weren’t sensitive to the light. 

“Do you need something?” She asked. She probably meant it sarcastically, but her tone was more gentle, as if she was really wondering what he needed. 

It repulsed him. She should be angry at him. He should be angry at her. They were better when they were angry at each other, biting words and bitter comebacks. He knew how to do that, how to use that to his advantage. He knew how to control an argument. 

He did not know how to control a gentle tone of voice. He supposed he could try to make her angry, but he didn’t want to talk to her. He didn’t want to talk at all. He was still drunk, and the firewhiskey had burned his anger into exhaustion. 

She had never spoken to him like that before, and Draco knew the only thing that had changed between them was what had happened yesterday. The fingers on his left hand flexed slightly. Her neck had been soft beneath them. 

Her wrist was slight and skittish and she had tried to pull away from him, but he knew that she only did that in case he was lying. He had meant to lie but things had gotten away from him. 

Instead of answering, he just turned around. It was an awkward turn, probably even stranger than it would have been if he had turned before she had asked him if he needed anything. But he didn’t care. He didn’t want to talk to her at all. 

He didn’t do shit all day, and she didn’t bother him again. 

He didn’t drink that night, Thursday night, because he was exhausted and sort of loathed himself. He wanted Pansy and he felt sick thinking about it. He shouldn’t want her anymore, not when the part of him that loved her had, by his own admission, died sometime last night. 

But it hadn’t died at all, it had just taken a new form. A new form that he would have to live with. It was always metamorphosing, that ugly part of him that loved her. 

If Pansy came to his apartment now and got in bed with him he might hurt her. The thought was strange and almost frightening, but it wasn't as bad as the knowledge that he would let her back in. 

He wanted to get off so he lay in bed with his hand around his dick. But he couldn’t think about Pansy, and he couldn’t remember anything about the girl he had fucked on Tuesday. 

He tried moving his hand up and down and thinking of nothing at all, just his bedsheets and the way the curtains hung over his window. It felt good, but in a numb sort of way. Eventually, he squeezed his eyes shut and let his thoughts go. 

Pansy flashed through his mind, her nails digging into his skin, and he felt a bit of nausea and a wave of pleasure that were somehow indiscernible. He thought of grabbing a girl in a club and taking her into the bathroom and fucking her hard against the sink, but she didn’t have a face and he was too tired to put words in her mouth. 

Fuck it all. He thought of grabbing her throat, the faceless girl, and hearing her cry out as he fucked into her and his right hand moved faster around his dick and his other hand flexed, fingers reaching out, remembering the feeling of something else. 

He gave into it. 

Then the girl he was fucking had a face, or at least a neck, and it was Iris, and he thought of her voice saying his name in her accent, her fucking accent which he hated because she made all the vowels sound flat. She said his name angrily, like she hated saying it. 

He finished, cast a _Scourgify_ , and willed himself to sleep, resolving to forget that that had ever happened. 

Waking up Friday morning was somehow even harder than it had been the day before. He wasn't drunk anymore, and there was no way he could still be hungover, but his head was still aching, like his brain was expanding and pushing against his skull. 

He wasn't tired anymore, but he felt a sort of exhaustion that had nothing to do with the amount of sleep he had gotten. It was the same feeling he used to have during those two years of house arrest, like his bones were rebelling against his body. 

One more day of work, and then there’d be a weekend, and then he’d go out and get even drunker and hope that he could flush everything out of his body by Monday morning. All the dependency and despondence and gin. He would keep the anger, though. 

He got to the Love Chamber before Iris did. 

He heard the doors open, heard her come in, but he didn’t turn around. He wondered if her ceasing to exist would be too much to ask for. In terms of favors from the universe, Draco didn't suppose he qualified for much. 

She gave him ten minutes of silence before her voice cut through the room. Even sober, it was jarring. 

“Are you even doing anything over there?”

He supposed he should just ignore her, so he did. She didn’t usually allow herself to be ignored, though, and this time was no exception. 

“So you’re just going to ignore me,” she said, unmistakably bitter. 

“That was the plan,” he replied without turning. He could picture her face without seeing it, though. He was sure she was staring at him, facing his back. Her eyebrows were probably knit together, her lips slightly parted. Confused, maybe a little bit angry. 

“I don’t see how you think that’s going to work.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“Because we work together. And you clearly have no idea what we’re doing, so you’ll have to ask me at some point.”

“Is that what you’re waiting for?” Draco asked. It explained why she hadn’t been trying to get his attention as much - she thought he would have to do it himself at some point. 

He turned around, satisfied to see that her face was arranged in the exact expression he thought it would be. He hadn’t meant to turn around and he wasn't sure when he made the decision to do so, but either way he was facing her now. 

“I’m not waiting for anything,” she said. 

Gone was the gentle tone that she had put on for him yesterday. She was getting more annoyed at him now. It was a good thing - he could handle her annoyance. He could handle her anger. 

“No? You’ve just spent the better part of yesterday staring at my back.” 

He was trying to make her angry, but instead she just looked sort of confused. 

“And you spent the better part of yesterday doing nothing.”

“That pisses you off,” he said. It was an observation rather than a question. Her eyes narrowed, as if she didn’t like the fact that he could observe her, that he could watch her behavior and form his own conclusions regardless of what she thought. 

“You called me worthless last week, but you don’t even know what we’re brewing,” she said. It was true, he had called her worthless last week. He had been angry with her for doing something that he no longer remembered. He hated the fact that she had a point now. 

“If you care so much about it, turn around and do it yourself,” he said. 

There was a second of silence. They stared at each other. Her eyes had a burning sensation to them that was not unlike firewhiskey. She was boring two little holes into his face, into his eyes. 

He wondered what she would say, whether she would raise the stakes of the argument or try to undermine it. If she tried to stop arguing, Draco supposed that he could find a way to make her start again. He loved seeing her mad. He would prefer if she didn’t stop arguing, though. 

She was easier for him to know, easier for him to control, when she was angry at him. Draco understood her behavior better when she was mad, and felt a peaceful sense of power at being able to exacerbate that condition. 

The other reason he wanted to keep her mad, which he hadn’t accepted enough to be actively thinking about, was that he liked her eyes better when they were blazing, narrowed and angry. 

But she didn’t speak at all. She just turned around and grabbed a vial from the corner of her desk. She had done exactly what he had asked her to, but Draco found himself oddly angry about it. He had gotten the last word, but now he was left staring at the back of her neck. 

So he turned around too. And there they left it, for a little while. 

Their next argument came shortly afterwards. Draco didn’t turn around when he spoke to her, and the tone of her voice made him think that she hadn’t turned around either. Fine. They would both speak to the walls in front of them and assume that their words would snake around the other person’s back. It was immature but he wasn't going to be the one to change it. 

Then there was silence for a while. Draco started brewing a potion that he had been working on a while ago just for something to do. If Iris tried to question him, he would say it was some sort of assignment that was only for him. Top secret, nothing to do with whatever she was doing. 

He couldn’t believe he had forgotten what they were supposed to be doing, but withdrawal from Pansy had always given him a bit of a shock. 

Draco glanced up at the clock after a while and was relieved to be greeted with the fact that they didn’t even have an hour left of the work day. It was Friday, it would be the weekend now, and he could go out and forget about everything for extended periods of time. 

And then crash on Monday with the overwhelming knowledge that none of the thoughts he had tried to drink away had actually left his head. But he was trying not to dwell on that. He was trying not to think about it at all. 

Twenty minutes before the clock chimed, Iris’s voice rang out across the room. 

“I have my results. I suppose you can’t compare yours to them,” she said.

“Why even ask, then?” Draco said, exasperated. He spoke to the wall in front of him, a beautiful marble thing, but he could picture her face. He could always picture her face. It was disconcerting.

“Just proving a point,” she replied. 

He turned at that. How fucking annoying of her. Did she think she was somehow superior to him now? She turned around at the same time he did. A true face-off. 

“Come off it,” he growled. “What are you going to do, run up to Granger?”

“Maybe I will,” she answered. A good challenge. Her eyes were quickly filling up with anger. 

“You won’t.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Obvious reasons, Iris.” He liked saying her name because her eyes would widen a little bit when he did.

“I’d go to Granger in a second,” Iris said back, seemingly unfazed by Draco throwing her name around. “I don’t care about you.”

“That’s a lie,” Draco replied easily. 

“What would possibly make you think that I care about you?” Iris said. Her tone was bitter to be sure, but there was an underlayer to it. 

It suddenly became clear to Draco exactly what Iris was doing. He could easily bring up her reaction to what had happened between them on Wednesday, but in doing so, he would be bringing up his own actions. The fact that he had almost kissed her. 

“The way you hang off every word I say,” Draco said. Skirting the issue, and they both knew it. 

“Oh, that’s all?” Iris asked. She knew Draco had figured out her strategy, so she might as well be bare-faced about it. She had no shame and he despised it. It did make for a good argument though. He couldn’t deny that. 

“Yes,” he said.

There was a moment of silence. She looked at him, really looked at him, with her burning eyes. 

“So you’re just going to ignore what happened,” she finally said. She spoke under her breath, as if she wasn't sure she even wanted him to hear her. He wished he could pretend he hadn’t, but the look in her eyes was telling him that she would simply gather the confidence to say it again. Brash confidence. 

“Nothing happened,” he said. 

“Yes, it did.”

They were quite close, the two of them. Only a step between them. Draco wondered when that had happened. Iris had walked out from her desk, but he threw a glance over his shoulder and realized with a start that he had taken a couple of steps, too. 

He really needed to stop letting his limbs go on autopilot around her. 

“I assure you,” Draco said, putting on his best superior tone, “I have no idea what you’re on about.”

But then he looked down at her and knew at once that it would happen. His right hand flexed and remembered her neck and the fact that he had gotten off to her last night. Her eyes were full with anger, but there were flickers of something else, too. 

Later, he would blame it all on his mental instability and withdrawal from Pansy. 

But for now, he watched as she took a step forward and closed the space between them. Her eyes cut into him, two sharpened knives, and he cut her right back. 

A breath. 

Then she was leaning towards him, her confidence bordering on arrogance. As if he would lean in, as if he would kiss her. 

But her nose touched his cheek and his body remembered how it had been the last time, so his hand moved through the air without his endorsement and wrapped loosely around her neck. It was warm. 

Her lips were so close to his. If he moved a fraction of an inch, they would touch. 

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” she whispered, and then she kissed him. 

It was a gentle kiss and he had never wanted to be gentle. Her lips were slightly parted. He pressed his hand into her neck harder. She made a little noise in her throat. 

He deepened the kiss, making it angry. He could only ever be angry with her, so if they were going to do this he would have to be ruthless. 

Her body pressed against his, her slight frame curving under him, breasts pressed against his chest. He realized then that his free hand was wrapped around her, pulling her to him, that he had done it. He wished he hadn’t, hadn’t done any of this, but he wouldn’t stop. 

Her hands were linked around his neck.

He didn’t want to kiss her anymore, but she was pressed against him and his body had other ideas. He supposed that it didn’t matter how Iris felt, what she wanted. If she was offering herself to him he would take her and use her to his own end. 

“Draco...” she said. She said it in the exact way he had imagined. A little bit angry. Flat vowels. She was trying to turn it into a sentence, but he didn’t want her to. 

So he kissed her again to shut her up. She made another little noise. He fucking hated it and hoped she did it again. His power over her seemed suddenly limitless and exponential. 

Why should he hold himself back from her? He didn’t care about her and never had. And never would. 

For the first time in a while, his body didn’t feel heavy. Fuck. But he knew he would. Perhaps he had known for a while that he would. Since Wednesday, at least. Since she had interrupted him and Pansy. Since he saw her standing in the atrium, unsure but with an edge of defiance. 

He knew he would so he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:)


	11. Mistakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyyy I know I said I wouldn't warn you each time a chapter is explicit but since this is the first one I'm going to! this chapter has sexual content in it (obviously) and consider this a blanket warning for the rest of the story too x

_IRIS_

She had never, _never_ , been kissed like this before.

All she could think was that he was kissing her like he hated her. They were fighting, always fighting, but this time without words. 

His hand was wrapped around the side of her neck, his thumb angling her jaw towards him, his palm pressing into her skin, restricting her airflow slightly. The tips of his finger reached the hairs at the nape of her neck. Threatening to pull, to hurt her. 

He might do it, too. 

Draco’s lips trapped hers. He was unmerciful - his kisses were proof enough of that. He was biting at her, trapping her upper lip between his teeth and sucking it in rough movements. 

She couldn’t move if she wanted to - his hand was making sure of that. The other hand, the one on her waist, was pressing into her bare skin. He had moved it under her sweater. Her robes had already hit the floor and she didn’t want to spend any time thinking about when that had happened. 

No. if she thought about anything other than what was happening _right now_ , her logical thought might return to her, and she might stop. She might pull away from Draco. 

And even if her brain was slow to action, her body knew that that could not happen. 

He broke the kiss for a second, and she gasped slightly, panting. He was barely letting her breathe. She caught his gaze - his eyes were darker than usual, flashing with anger and something else that she hadn’t seen before. 

His lips returned to hers, ruthless and rough, and she let out a sound somewhere in between a gasp and a whine. Fuck. She couldn’t go advertising the way this was making her feel, not to Draco. He already had a big enough ego. 

So she fought back instead. She moved her lips with equal fervor, trying to move her jaw out of his grip. He growled in return, the hand on her waist tightening. 

She unlinked her hands from around his neck, bringing them to his shoulders and digging her nails in as he deepened his kiss. 

Draco broke the kiss again. They stared at each other for a second. Iris meant to challenge him, to show him that she could hate him just as much, that she was just as angry, but his face caught her off guard. 

She felt a pang shoot through her body, nestling in her lower stomach. Fuck. He really had no business being this attractive. His head was tilted slightly, angled down, so that his sharp jawline and high cheekbones were on full display. 

He was in rare form today. So attractive she could cry. He could have been a statue, could have been a painting. Light hair, light eyes, light skin, but there was an unmistakable darkness in him. It was hidden in the curve of his lips, in the way his eyelashes hung over his eyes. 

There was something in the air. Her nose was blocked, but she might as well have had a mouthful of Amortentia. 

She could hear herself breathing, almost panting, trying to get as much air as she could between kisses despite his hand around her neck. She was sure she couldn’t disguise the hunger in her gaze. 

She must have been shivering, or maybe it was just the air around her. Seconds dragged on and felt like years, but no time had passed at all. 

And Draco was staring at her too. Just looking at her, his eyes roving up and down her body, which was still clothed. For a second, she wished he wouldn’t. If he looked at her too hard he would see that she wasn't the girl he wanted, not really. She didn’t want to be. She didn’t want - well, she wanted a lot from him right now. But not that. 

How they must have looked, the two of them. If anyone else had come in and seen them standing in the middle of the room, staring each other down, they might have thought that they were about to fight. 

Draco did have a certain sort of violence in his eyes. 

They moved at the same time. Lips crashing together, hands moving to buttons and collars to separate the barriers remaining between them. 

She could feel his skin underneath his shirt. He wasn't warm. His hands left her neck and waist, moving to the hem of her sweater. She didn’t have time to feel childish for putting her hands in the air. She just had time to want it off, to want him back against her. 

When they collided again, he moved to her neck instead of her face. He shrugged the button-down off his shoulders, and her hands dropped from his shoulders to his biceps, her nails digging in slightly to test the waters as his teeth grazed the skin below her ear. 

They hadn’t said a word. Iris didn’t know what she would say. She was afraid that if she spoke, she would remind him that it was her he was with and he would stop like he had on Wednesday.

Her heart was beating so loud that he must be able to feel it below his lips. He was sucking on her pulse-point, letting her hands stray from his biceps to his bare back. She felt the muscles there, taut under her fingers, and let out a breath.

He pulled off her neck and they stared at each other again. 

“If you mention this to anybody I’ll fucking kill you,” he said. His voice was so low, so quiet, that she wouldn’t have been able to hear him if she was another two feet away. It was an admittance of what they were about to do, but also a condemnation. 

Fine. She didn’t want him either. She just wanted this. 

He placed his hands on either side of her waist. It was more disorienting than stabilizing - his fingers pressing so hard into her bare skin that she wouldn’t be surprised if it bruised. She wouldn’t have thought it possible before today. 

“Understand?” His tone was biting and cruel. His eyes steadied on hers. His bare chest lifted slightly, then dropped. He was breathing harder too. The thought appeased her a little - she could have an effect on him, too. 

He leaned into her again, slower this time, but paused right before he hit her lips. 

“Do. You. Fucking understand?” He growled. She felt a little bit of the air’s electricity seeping into her. 

“Yeah,” she breathed back. Even tone, a little bit of condescension. She could sound unbothered even if she didn’t feel it. 

But he took it as a challenge. His hands tightened around her waist, then he was pushing her backwards, making her take a stumbling step back, then another one, and then his hands strayed downwards and locked around her thighs and she was in the air. 

She took her hands off his biceps, linking them around his neck instinctively and letting out a gasp as he carried her a couple more steps and dropped her down on top of her desk. 

He was still taller, towering over her, and as soon as he put her down his hand was back on her neck and his lips were back on hers, pushing against her, making her lean back. 

He parted her legs so that he was standing between them, and she pushed her body against his chest without thinking about it. She needed to be closer to him. His thigh pressed in between her legs, and she whimpered softly, the feeling in her lower stomach expanding, taking over her body entirely. 

Her hands scrambled at the zip on his trousers, feeling him hard beneath them. 

He didn’t bother taking her skirt off - just pushed it further up her chest to reveal her underwear beneath it. She watched him look at her, his eyes darkening, and she pulled his trousers down in one deft movement. 

Then he pressed against her again, their bodies moving in tandem. His hands made quick work of her bra, then her bare chest was pressed against his. Breasts brushing up against him as he kissed her. 

She heard him make a noise at that, something deep in his throat. It sent a wave of vindication through her, power and insurrection. 

Impatient, she ground against the surface of the desk, towards his leg. He broke the kiss and stared at her. 

Not breaking eye-contact, he brought a hand to her waist, playing with the band of her underwear. She shivered in anticipation, arching her back slightly, waiting for him. He slipped his hand inside, the pads of his fingers brushing her clit, feeling back. 

Iris was sure he could feel the moisture at her core, how wet she was just from being kissed by him. He raised his eyebrows the same way he did after insulting her. Like he knew he had control of the argument. 

“You’re desperate for it,” he whispered. “Aren’t you.”

He loved calling her that. Loved making her feel juvenile and uncoordinated. She wouldn’t let him. She met his gaze, challenging him. His pointer finger rested right at her entrance, circling around her, teasing her. She bit her lip, stopping herself from making any noise. 

“Tell me,” Draco said. “Tell me how desperate you are, Iris.”

God, the way he said her name. He didn’t need her to tell him, he could feel her. She had never been good at hiding her emotions. He could probably tell by the way her eyes widened when he spoke, how her entire body was quivering slightly at his tiny movements. 

“Tell me and I’ll give it to you.”

He pressed the pad of his thumb into her clit lightly, and she whined softly. She could see how hard he was, knew he wanted this too, but he had enough self control to not give it to her unless she begged. 

Maybe she really was desperate for it. Maybe her mind was just clouded with lust.

“Please,” she said, but the word came out kind of choked. 

The corner of his mouth turned up in response. Not happy. Contemptuous. Power-hungry. He moved even closer to her somehow, leaned down again, traced his free hand up her side. He dragged his fingers across her breasts, making her shiver. Pushing down slightly.

“Please, please, please,” she said, not caring anymore how she sounded. He was so close to her, his fingers ghosting over her entrance, teasing her. But he had always been willing to do whatever he needed to do to win an argument. 

“Say you’re desperate for it,” he said, and his voice wasn't as even as it usually was. 

She arched her back and pushed herself against him, watching his lidded eyes staring down at her. He could give it to her - she could give it back. 

He pressed his thumb harder against her clit. Her breath hitched, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of watching her come undone. Not yet. 

“Fine,” she hissed, moving her hands to the waistband of his boxers. “I’ll say it.”

She pulled his boxers off, fighting the urge to look down and take in the length of him in favor of not breaking eye contact. She watched as his eyes widened slightly before assuming their normal narrowed state. Angry now. Even more angry than he had been. 

Iris raised her eyebrows at him, glanced down. Holy fuck. She wasn't sure if she had ever had someone as big as him, but she supposed she couldn’t exactly object now. She had taken back control, even if she was about to beg him. Even if she was about to tell him that she was desperate for it. 

She knew that he was, too. She was ahead in their little dance, winning the game they were perpetually playing. And she liked it that way. 

She met his eyes again. “I’m desperate for it.”

But Draco had never liked Iris being in control. And there was no way he was going to let her stay like that for long. So instead of slipping his finger inside her like she thought he would, he lifted her off the desk and flipped her around. 

Iris was facing the wall now, facing away from him, and she felt his hand on her back, pushing her over. Surprised, she let herself fall. Her eyes widened as his other hand grabbed her waist hard, pushing her against her desk. 

Her breasts hit the cold wood, and his hand snaked around her body to hold her down. 

Fuck. Shit. There was no way she should find this attractive. There was no way she should want it like this, no way she should want him to fuck her while she couldn’t even see him, push her down against her own desk. 

But she did. 

She felt him hard against her entrance and whimpered. He pressed his hand down harder on her back. Her breasts pressed into the wood and so did her cheek. 

He gave her no warning before he slammed into her. She cried out with the force of it, whimpering as he pulled out and slammed in again. Her thighs hit the edge of her desk with every thrust, her breasts shook, her body trembled with the work of absorbing his force and keeping herself upright. 

“Shit,” she heard him breathe from behind her. 

His free hand moved from her back to her chest, between her body and the table it was pressed into. He grabbed her breast, squeezing hard, making her cry out again. 

She hadn’t been fucked for a good couple months, but then… she’d never been fucked like this, not ever. 

He didn’t seem to care how she felt. He was just taking her, taking what he wanted from her. For some reason, the anger of it heightened her emotions. She wanted to make it feel good, wanted him to like it, because then she would win. 

So she squeezed around him, rewarded by a string of curses exiting his lips in a quick whisper. 

He was just using her, but she was just using him. It was free from everything, all expectations. She didn’t need him to love her - no, he hated her… and for some reason, that was fine. No. That was good. She wanted him to hate her more, to be rougher with her. 

She felt her orgasm build as he hammered into her. She never came from this, just sex, or she hadn’t ever before, but the choked-back sounds he was making and his harsh movements were doing something to her that she hadn’t felt with any of her exes or old one-offs. 

Then the clock chimed. For a second, Iris thought that it would happen the same way it had. Maybe the ringing would wake him up and he would pull out of her and put on his clothes and leave before she had time to turn around. 

Maybe he would say something biting to her and pretend like none of this had ever happened. 

But he didn’t. 

Instead, he increased his speed, moving faster in and out of her, a punishing pace. The pleasure was bordering on pain, his hand on her waist anchoring her, his other hand drifting up her chest and down her back, pressing into her skin and leaving bruises behind. 

Then it trailed off her chest, around her waist, his pointer and middle finger pawing over her clit in precise movements. 

And that was that. He was trying to make her feel good not to make her feel good, but so he could assert his control over her. So that, when she looked back on this moment, she would remember herself completely under his power. 

She didn’t care. She couldn’t care, not when he was moving like that, not when waves of pleasure were building up in her body, rocking her hips back and forth. 

His skin hit hers, her thighs hit the table, his fingers danced around her clit in just the right way. Her torso pressed against the wood still, even though his hands were no longer holding her there. 

And he sped up more, faster, impossibly fast, chasing his high. Iris was no longer in control of her body, not really. Her legs were shaking, she was letting out a string of broken moans, his fingers didn’t stop moving. The clock stopped chiming - or maybe it had stopped chiming five minutes ago, or maybe it had stopped three hours ago. 

Finally, Iris felt his hips stutter inside of her. His skin pressed against hers, he filled her up and she squeezed around him, making him stay inside her. His fingers pressed hard against her clit as he came, and he pumped into her a couple more times.

Then he pulled out. She whimpered at the loss of contact, suddenly feeling overstimulated. The coldness of the wood her torso was pressed into, his fingers still moving on her, the loss of feeling inside her. The air still felt electric, but now in a dangerous way. 

And she was gone too. The orgasm hit her like a wave. She felt her body shudder as if the temperature in the room had dropped twenty degrees. She might have made a noise, must have, but she couldn’t remember. 

Their breaths mingled in the silence, panting. She propped herself up on her elbows, still shaking slightly with the force of him. She heard a zipper, felt herself blushing as she realized the state she was currently in. 

Her underwear was hanging around her thighs, her skirt was hitched up towards her chest, her waist and chest were red from where his fingers had dug into her skin. Her makeup must be smeared, her hair must be disheveled, her sweater was somewhere on the ground. 

When she turned, he was staring at her. 

His hair was messy, he was breathing harder than normal, but other than that he looked sickeningly put-together. His trousers were already back on, his button-up in his hands. He looked her up and down almost clinically, the passion gone from his eyes. 

“Say a fucking word, Iris. I’ll ruin you.” He was cold. She felt a sudden urge to cover her chest. She didn’t doubt that he would follow through on the threat, especially not after what he had just done to her. 

She grabbed her sweater off the ground, pulling it over her head quickly. 

When she looked up again, he was leaving. 

She pulled her underwear up and her skirt down, pushing her hair back from her face and taking a breath. 

What. The. Fuck. 

Her legs felt shaky. Sometimes she liked to walk home, at least a little ways, but as soon as she got outside the Ministry she apparated back to her apartment building. 

The lift was perpetually broken, something about a pixie infestation from two years ago, but maybe someone was looking out for her because it was working today. She wasn't sure she could have walked up the stairs in her current state. 

As she walked down the hallway towards her door, the remaining lust dissipated from her mind, leaving behind was a sinking feeling that was not unlike regret. She had wanted him to fuck her. She couldn’t deny that. But now… 

Now she just felt a sinking shame about it. How many horrible things had she heard about him from Theodore, from Tracey and Sebastian? Simon and Sadie had warned her about him, and neither of them had even attended school with him. 

The fact that she couldn’t tell any of her friends what just happened said everything she needed to know about whether or not she should have done it. 

She got in the shower, exhaling, washing the traces of his hands off her skin. After a while, she turned off the water and wrapped a towel around herself. She inspected her neck in the part of the mirror that wasn't condensated - there were marks, but they could be easily covered by her hair. 

It would probably be best to adopt Draco’s own method of repressing thoughts: never mentioning or acknowledging that something happened ever again. He’d only be too happy to play along. 

It was a strange thing. 

The feeling had been unreal. Like she had transcended, a different dimension. She had never felt that way before. The shame hadn’t dropped until later, until her apartment and the shower, but it was already clouding the act itself. 

She wondered if someday she would look back on it and the shame and the pleasure would be indiscernible. She wondered if someday she would look back and only remember the shame. 

But she doubted it. The way he had moved, his fingers and his hands and his… well. Iris didn’t think she would ever forget about that. Not really. 

The weekend went by quickly, mostly consumed by her thoughts about Friday - both overwhelmingly good and overwhelmingly bad. She didn’t go out on Saturday like usual, claiming that she had a headache. She might as well have a headache anyway. 

Monday morning dawned and there was a pit in her stomach. She knew that he wouldn’t acknowledge it, and she wasn't planning on acknowledging it either, but that didn’t change the fact that it had happened. 

Draco had bent her over her desk and fucked her, and then he had just left. 

Luckily, Sebastian caught the lift with her. His presence was always a stress reliever. He pulled out an anecdote about something that had happened to him in the bathroom of the Leaky Cauldron on Saturday, but he ended up not really remembering his own story. 

“I think I drank too much,” he said by way of apology. 

Iris chuckled. “That’s alright. Sad I missed it.”

“Level nine,” the voice of the lift said, “Department of Mysteries.”

“As if we don’t know that by now,” Sebastian joked, walking with Iris over to the door of the Love Chamber. “We missed you too, though - fuck a headache. Did you never learn Healing charms?”

“No, I did,” Iris said, pausing in front of the door, “I’m just too lazy to actually do them sometimes.”

Sebastian cocked his head and raised his eyebrows, seeing right through her excuse but letting her have it anyway. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “did you leave work early Friday? I waited for you in the atrium for a little while, but you didn’t show.”

The words ‘Friday’ and ‘work’ immediately sent a cacophony of images through Iris’s head that she was trying her best not to think about. 

“Um… no. I stayed late,” she said, shooting Sebastian what she hoped looked like a casual smile. 

“Doing what?”

“Oh - just… we have a deadline? On a potion, so… we had to stay late and get it done…”

Sebastian cocked his head even further. “Relax, Iris, I was kidding. We’re not supposed to tell each other what we get up to. It’s all top secret, yeah?”

“Oh! Right, yeah. I was - right. Sorry. I’m tired.”

“From staying in all weekend?” Sebastian was clearly taking the piss, but Iris still felt a bit interrogated. If she couldn’t successfully tell a white lie to a friend who didn’t care, how was she supposed to pretend like nothing ever happened to everyone else - including herself?

She chuckled lightly, trying to play it off. 

“Are you all right?” Sebastian asked. 

“Yes. Fine,” Iris was staring at the door now. The knowledge that Draco was behind it was disconcerting to say the least. 

“Is Malfoy giving you a problem or something?”

Iris whipped around. “No! It’s nothing to do with him!”

Sebastian smiled at her, but it was the sort of smile you might give to a person who was clearly not all there. Perhaps perceiving her reluctance to talk, though, he gave her a quick pound on the back and made his way over to the Hall of Prophecies after promising to see her after work. 

With that, Iris turned towards the door to the Love Chamber, sighed, and tapped her wand on the handle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how did I do


	12. PART TWO: Benefits

**PART TWO: BENEFITS**

_DRACO_

The air was sickeningly hot. The end of July always brought with it a bout of such intense heat that everyone in the entire country felt as though they might be living in a furnace. Every year, people convinced themselves they had been overreacting. Then when it hit, everyone overreacted all over again.

Draco, who had always preferred the relative anonymity of nighttime and the abrasiveness of the cold, loathed summertime. The long days, the blazing sun - he could think of nothing he wanted more than to put on a coat and watch the sun disappear as he walked home. 

He hadn’t walked home on Friday, though. Walking left him too much time with his thoughts. His brain had inexplicably gone missing for fifteen minutes on Friday afternoon and he didn’t trust himself left alone with it. 

It was Monday morning now, and he had spent the greater part of the weekend trying to disassociate himself from whatever had happened after work Friday. During work. 

Disassociation on such a grand scale required going out to the Siren on Friday and Saturday, drinking himself into blankness, and forcing himself to only think about the things directly in his field of vision. 

He tried to sleep for the majority of the day on Sunday. He had always found people who sleep during the day lazy and unsophisticated. But if the alternative was thinking about what had happened with Iris, he would rather be the most unsophisticated person alive. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly work. His mind tended to flit back to his memories of the event whenever he left it unattended - and sometimes even when he was actively trying to think of something else. 

_You know exactly what I’m talking about._

She was so brazen with her confidence, the way she spoke to him. Draco could tell what she was about to say, about to do, with one look into her eyes. They had a sort of brashness to them that he despised. 

Yes, he had tried to ignore what happened on Wednesday. What had _almost_ happened on Wednesday. And she hadn’t let him. 

The thought came to him late Sunday night, ugly and rearing: what if she didn’t let him forget this, either? What if she demanded to talk about it? What if she told her friends about it? 

In truth, he had been thinking about what had happened more than he would like to admit. And not just the fears of having to talk about it and be reminded that it had happened. 

No. He had been thinking about the thing itself. Fucking her. 

He hated the way her eyes burned. He hated the way her hips curved, the shape of her collarbones, the drag of her fingers light on his back and the sting of her fingernails digging into his biceps. He hated how her voice changed, how her skin had looked pressed against a table. 

But somehow his hatred of her had made it better. 

The way she spoke to him, stared at him… he knew she hated him too. She hated what he was doing to her. She had tried - and succeeded, for a second, at controlling him. Her hands on the band of his boxers, her gaze trained on him as she spoke. 

The way her eyes had widened as he flipped her over, pressed her down. 

It wasn't sex. It was an argument they had while fucking, showing each other how much they despised one another with hands instead of words. 

And he couldn’t explain away the way she felt. 

But he could. He could. He had to - the alternative was accepting… accepting something that he couldn’t accept. 

Withdrawal from Pansy had always made him do crazy things. He had moved back to the Manor during her first engagement, which was the highest form of self-torture. When she had come to Draco’s apartment two years ago to tell him that things were _serious_ with Graham Montague, he had thrown a bottle of firewhiskey against the wall of his apartment and watched it burn for a while. 

There had been the six month period that she was in France, too. He had gone to visit her in Paris. Three days after he left, the news broke that she had started to date some Beauxbatons boy. 

He drank so much after he received that owl that he had woken up in the alley between the Leaky Cauldron and Magical Menagerie with a girl’s body on top of him. He had never met her but she insisted that they had fucked. 

Anyways. Yes. Losing Pansy had never been good for Draco’s health. 

So maybe it stood to reason that if Iris was offering herself up to him, he wouldn’t deny her. Usually, he would go pick up another girl, but she had taken the work out of it. And he was already mentally unstable. 

And… and… he had been thinking of Pansy the whole time. He had closed his eyes and pretended that it was Pansy beneath him, Pansy making the noises Iris was. He _had_ done that. Mostly. Part of the time.

He would rather it be Pansy anyway, so he supposed it didn’t matter who he was picturing. 

The sun bounded through the curtains on Monday morning. He woke up and thought of Iris, which led him to thinking of Iris bent over below him, her skirt pushed up on her stomach, her underwear hanging off her thighs. The side of her face pressed into the table.

Which led him to debating whether or not to take a shot before work. 

He eventually decided to go in sober. He ran his hands through his hair a couple times and yawned. It was strange, he thought, how one could yawn after sleeping half the day. He supposed people always craved something more once they had it. Perhaps that was the problem with Pansy. 

He tapped his wand against the door handle and waited for the click as the Love Chamber recognized him. 

He would ignore it. Even if she couldn’t, he would. Even if she tried to remind him, tried to force him to say something, he wouldn’t.

Whatever had happened on Friday was a one-off, a particularly low moment for Draco - the latest in a series of low moments, honestly. Moments that he was determined to move past. 

Iris wasn't inside when he got there. He got out his cauldron, cast an _Aguamenti_ to fill it up, and pointed his wand at the bottom to heat it up. 

Iris was probably out in the atrium talking to Nott or Daley or Tracey Davis. She made a habit of doing that in the mornings. They drew attention to themselves with loud laughter and overlapping conversation. Not that he noticed. Not that he cared what she did. 

He heard the doors open a couple of minutes later, and his gaze flitted briefly to the clock. She wasn't late. Right on time. 

There were a couple of seconds of tension. He could hear her footsteps drawing closer to him. He paused, staring into the bubbling water in his cauldron. Waiting for her to break the silence with bated breath. 

Then her footsteps stopped. He heard her cast _Aguamenti_ under her breath. So she wasn't going to bring it up. 

Draco shut his eyes briefly, letting go of his breath. His body relaxed, the rigidity leaving his neck, releasing his shoulders. It was strange, maybe, that he had been so tense. The worst thing that could possibly happen was her mentioning it. And if she did, he could easily shut her down.

But perhaps he was tense for a different reason. If she mentioned it to him, if she got mad at him for ignoring it… there would be no way of pretending that it hadn’t happened at all. 

If she spoke about it, she would make it real. If she ignored it, if she kept her distance from him like he wanted, it could be fake. It could be something that they never talked about again. One of those things that Draco could look back on years later and wonder if it had even happened at all. 

He remembered an article that the _Daily Prophet_ had published in the midst of his family’s trials after the war. “Though the Malfoys seem to be able to lie to the public with ease,” it had stated, “they will never be able to lie to themselves. They will carry the guilt and shame of their actions with them for the rest of their days.”

Draco supposed that it was true enough. More true than most _Daily Prophet_ articles about him. The guilt and shame had always stuck with him in one way or another. Metamorphosing into hatred and destruction sometimes, deep sadness other times. He never used to be that way - never used to let anything get to him. 

Now it sometimes felt like everything was getting to him, getting at him, all at once. Another change. 

But the article wasn't all true. Draco _could_ lie to himself, would lie to himself, had been lying to himself for the better part of eight years. 

He found that if you told yourself something strongly enough, often enough, eventually your mind would bend to believe it. You would find yourself forgetting whether or not you had made it up at all. 

Most of his memories from the war were like that. His seventh year of school, when the only thing he had was Pansy and the knowledge that he would have to go home, go back to the Dark Lord and live through the mark on his arm - he was sure he had repressed some of those memories, sure he had invented others. 

The mind is a terrible, wonderful thing. Five years from now, he wouldn’t remember that he had ever had Iris like that. He wouldn’t even think of it. 

In the end, all his worry was for nothing. She never tried to speak to him, left him in peace the whole day. 

Halfway through the day, though, he heard her footsteps receding and looked up to see her leaving the Chamber. The doors swung closed behind her. Probably meeting up with Nott. She probably couldn’t go three hours without him. 

Five minutes later, the doors swung back open and she stepped through them. 

He glanced over at her, blinking in surprise when she caught his gaze immediately. She held his eyes in hers, an expression he couldn’t place taking over her face. 

For a second, he thought that she would mention it. Something about the way she was looking at him reminded him of the way she had looked the last time, the last time she had made him remember. The tension strung back through his body, stiffening his shoulders. 

But she dropped his gaze, watching her feet as she walked back across the floor. Draco’s eyes followed her as she walked, but he turned back to his table before she returned to hers. 

It seemed like he wasn't the only one attempting to entirely ignore what had happened, to sweep it under the rug and begin lying to himself.

For some reason, though, the thought pissed him off. It made perfect sense why he would be trying to forget _her_ \- he despised her for good reason and had Pansy on top of that. 

But why should she be trying to forget _him?_ It was clear by her every look how much she wanted him, how long she had waited for that moment. She had been the one to initiate it, too, with her whispers and her nose on his cheek. 

And… and… the thing itself. He could tell that she had liked it. He knew by the way she had looked at him then, the things she had said, the way her eyes had fallen shut and the way her arms had reached around his neck. 

So by his accounts, she should be begging for another chance with him. She should be hovering around him like Millicent Bulstrode used to do fourth year, she should be bringing up what happened at every turn of the conversation. 

But she wasn't. He bristled. 

Fine. It made it easier for him to forget, anyways, and that’s all he cared about. Whether or not she wanted him was inconsequential. 

They locked eyes again when the clock rang to announce the end of the day. Draco immediately recalled the last time he had heard that sound - on Friday. While he was inside her. Fuck. He needed to get those thoughts under control. Lying to yourself doesn’t work very well when your brain keeps forcing you to relive the things you’re trying to lie about. 

Anyways. 

She fixed him with a gaze that was unmistakably similar to the one she had given him right before it happened on Friday. Right before she had said _you know exactly what I’m talking about_.

He stared right back at her. Reminding her that she _did_ want it, that she couldn’t escape what happened. Her eyes dropped at once, face angling down.

As he left, he watched her face angle back up in his periphery. Watching him go. He fancied the thought of that - wondered if she hoped he would turn back around. He didn’t. 

The walk home was, as usual, sickeningly hot. He took the lift up, closing his eyes and letting the cool air wash over him as it rose towards the top level. By the time he stepped into the hallway, he had composed himself. 

Which was a good thing. Because he opened his door to a pair of black heels on his floor. 

A spike of something shot through him. It was like he had been sleepwalking all day and he was finally awake. He had been sleepwalking since he got the owl telling him that Pansy and Blaise were together, and now he was awake. Finally, finally awake. 

She was standing in the hallway, the windows of the living room beyond it framing her, the lights of Diagon Alley giving her a dark halo. 

Looking at Pansy felt simultaneously like everything had just fallen into place and like everything was suddenly out of order. Her presence in his life at once healed him and hurt him. She cut him so deeply that she was the only one who could possibly make it right. She was the only one who knew how. 

Her intolerance for weakness, her flightiness, the curve of her neck, her steadfastness, her hard edges, her dark eyes. She was a walking contradiction and so was their relationship. The best thing in his life and the worst. 

It was twisted, whatever existed between the two of them. Draco didn’t think he could ever have a relationship that wasn't twisted, though. When he loved someone he always loved them in terrible, hurtful ways. Pansy was the same. 

So perhaps they both deserved the pain they gave each other. 

He took off his robes. 

“It’s been a while,” she said. There was something in her voice that he couldn’t place, some sort of rhythm to her words that unsettled him in a familiar way. He had gone too long without it. 

“Thanks to you,” Draco said. He took a couple steps forward so that he was standing in the kitchen instead of the doorway. But if she wanted him, she would have to be the one to cut the rest of the distance. 

He did this often. _If she keeps her hand on my neck, it’s real._ Little tests, little ways of proving to himself that she did want him, did love him. _If she comes over before next Wednesday, she’s still mine._

She usually did what he wanted. When she didn’t, he cast it out of his mind. Forgot it like he was currently trying to forget fucking Iris. Fuck. He shouldn’t be thinking of Iris at all right now. 

“Are you jealous?” Pansy asked. She walked a couple steps towards him, her bare feet making no sounds as they hit the ground. He watched her. 

She reached him. She was just as he remembered her, every hair perfectly in place - but then, he couldn’t forget her. He wouldn’t, not ever. He knew that with absolute certainty, knew it more than he had known anything before. 

“Are you?” She asked again. 

She wanted him to be jealous of Blaise because she wanted him to belong to her. She wanted them to own each other. He could see it in her eyes. He would be hers if that's what she needed - she was his, too. 

“Yes,” he said. 

“I’m sorry,” she said back, even though that’s what she wanted. She always got what she wanted from him - twisted, heartless things - and then pretended that she hadn’t asked for them in the first place.

She was close to him now so he kissed her. She had to lean up to him. _If she moves her hands to my neck, she’s still mine._ She moved one of her hands around the nape of his neck, but kept the other one around the small of his back. He wasn't sure what that meant, whether or not she had passed. 

He didn’t care. 

They lay in his bed afterwards and he wondered how much time she would give him before she left. That was fine - Draco had never liked girls in his bed. Once he got what he wanted, he wanted them to leave. 

Pansy was different. She could do whatever she wanted. If she wanted to stay he would let her. 

She used to stay with him every night, back in those last two years of Hogwarts, sleep in his bed. That had been nice, but he was a different person now. He didn’t need that. 

“You have nothing to worry about,” she said softly. “You know that.”

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Everything with Blaise is just - my mother. Well, my father, too. They like him. You know how that is.”

He nodded. He had no idea how that was. The only girl his mother had ever known about was Pansy.

“Do you want me to go?” She asked. 

He wasn't sure whether she wanted him to say yes or no. Sometimes she liked him to be tender, gentle with her. Sometimes she liked him to be tense and melodramatic, to start a fight with her so that she could feel like she lived a more extraordinary life than she did. 

“Whatever you want,” he said. 

“I think I might have to.” 

“Alright.”

She turned to look at him, but Draco kept his face pointed towards the ceiling. She wanted him to be emotional now, he could tell. She wanted him to want her to stay. She wanted to tell him that she had to go so that she could picture him missing her. 

“I have an early morning tomorrow. At Maulace Hill.” Pansy spoke with a casual flair, but he knew that she had chosen her words carefully. She wanted him to know that she was seeing Blaise tomorrow, going to his family home. Probably seeing his mother. 

Draco shut his eyes. “Alright.”

He heard a rustling of sheets. When he opened his eyes again, she was gone - her footsteps were soundless on the floor. 

He heard the door open then shut behind her and exhaled. Being with her was like drowning. It was beautiful under the water, unlike anything else on earth. Before it turned deadly.

The rest of the week was the same as Monday had been. Quieter than most work weeks. He and Iris barely spoke, never argued. It would be almost as if she wasn't there at all, but for the sound of her shoes on the floor and her eyes. 

Her eyes had a strange habit of catching his. He would look around the room or out the window, and they would grab his gaze out of thin air. Grab it and hold it for a couple of seconds. 

His expression was always a careful blank. He was sure she hated that, hated not being able to tell what he was thinking. He could usually tell what she was thinking. 

He could tell when she was angry, that is. That was easy. She seemed to be angry at him most of the time. He couldn’t blame her, really - he was pissed off at her most of the time, too. By default. 

But there were other times when she was staring at him and he couldn’t quite tell what she was thinking. It wasn't as if she was trying to hide her emotion or pull a blank face - no, he could tell she was feeling _something_. It was pouring out of her eyes, her face, her shoulders. But it wasn't anger or sadness or lust or confusion. 

And he wasn't sure anyone was capable of feeling outside of those confines. 

Friday morning came around. Draco thought he should probably be happy that the work week was over, but the weekend wasn't much more attractive. He would probably go out and drink alone in a club instead of doing it in his kitchen. 

He wasn't sure why he still got the _Daily Prophet_ delivered. Perhaps he was trying to keep tabs on public opinion about himself (always negative). Maybe he just had a streak of self-loathing that manifested itself in reading pureblood gossip and the occasional hate-piece about him and his family. 

Today’s headlines definitely fed into the self-loathing category. 

He skipped through the Ministry shit and went straight to the middle of the paper, which housed the gossip columns. 

It was impossible to miss - a giant photograph of Pansy and Blaise leaving a Diagon Alley restaurant together. Pansy was wearing the same dress she had worn to his on Monday night. In the picture, Blaise held the door open for her as she walked out, looking out on the flashing cameras with a soft smile. A self-aware object of jealousy. 

Blaise was his usual stoic self, but he was staring at Pansy instead of the cameras. The photograph was glamourous and professional. Draco wondered whether Pansy had called the reporters herself. He wouldn’t put it past her. 

But no - this was news, at least by the standards of the _Daily Prophet_ ’s gossip column. Two big names, a possible engagement. Pansy was known for her engagements. 

Draco scanned the article quickly. He didn’t want to read it but the self-loathing streak took over. He caught a few phrases: “the loved-up couple,” “perfect gentleman,” and “Parkinson’s dress is from.” More than enough. 

He tossed it on his counter and stared at it for a second longer, watching Pansy look up at the cameras and the small smile spread across her face. 

At least the papers loved her. That’s all she had ever wanted. That and him. Now, he supposed, she had both. 

The work day started like normal. Iris came in, Draco didn’t look up, he listened to her footsteps, and neither of them spoke. 

Halfway through the day, though, Iris left again. Draco heard the doors close behind her and felt a flare of annoyance. He was looking for a reason to be angry, he was self-aware enough to know that. The problem was that, even when he realized it, he couldn’t stop himself from finding one. 

And Iris was providing him one. 

As soon as he heard the doors start to open, he turned towards them. She walked through with her head down, then looked up for a second. Trying to glance at him. It was his turn to trap her now, to keep her eyes in his. 

She stopped walking, surprised to find him staring at her so openly. Her eyes flitted across his face almost imperceptibly - and there it was. That look, that expression, the one Draco couldn’t figure out. It made him angrier. 

“What were you doing?” He said. He couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken to her. 

“Um… nothing,” Iris replied. “Just - talking to someone.”

“Nott,” Draco said. Confirming what he already knew. 

“Does it matter?” She asked, her brow creasing. He could tell she was starting to get annoyed, and the thought cheered him. He wasn't the only one in a bad mood today. He felt the familiar urge to make her angry, to watch her eyes narrow and shoulders tense.

“No, probably not. So I’m not exactly sure why you think it’s alright to miss work for it.”

“I wasn't even gone five minutes,” Iris said. 

“I don’t care how fucking long you were gone. It pissed me off.”

Iris paused, sizing him up. Her eyes were narrowed, but she seemed less annoyed and more… more like she was trying to figure something out. Figure him out. 

“Is this about Pansy?” She said. 

Fuck. What? Draco blinked. Supposed she’d seen the paper. His anger grew. Perhaps it was illogical - no, it _was_ illogical. Part of him could see that. The other part of him was pissed off that Iris could even think about Pansy, that she knew about them. 

“You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about,” Draco growled. 

“Don’t I? I saw the paper,” she confirmed. “And if you’re trying to get me pissed off, it’s not going to work. If we can’t work together, I’d rather you just not talk to me at all. I think that’s the mature thing to do.” 

She said the words like she had been saving them up. Asking him to leave her alone because it was the mature thing to do. Fucking bullshit, all of it. She wasn't mature, either. She liked fighting with him, too - he could tell. He could tell that much. 

She got off on their arguments just as much as he did, and she had proved it last Friday. A week ago. But nothing had happened, he needed to keep reminding himself of that. Nothing had happened. 

“Please do me a favor and shut the fuck up,” Draco said. 

“Fine. You started this whole thing, but fine. I’ll fuck off.”

There was a second of silence. She had walked closer to him and he hadn’t noticed. The same thing had happened last time, last Friday. For a second, he thought she might mention it. He thought the brazen confidence might filter into her eyes, that she might take a step closer and just say it. 

“Yeah, do that,” he said. 

But she didn’t. She just stood there, and he stood there, and they stared at each other. He wondered again whether she would bring it up, wondered if she might say something. 

“You fuck off me too, then,” she said. “It’s not like I want you talking to me, either.”

Draco’s eyes narrowed immediately. It was one thing for him to say something like that. One thing for him to want to forget about what had happened last Friday. It was another for her, another for her to pretend that she didn’t want him, didn’t want it at all, wasn't begging for it just a week ago. 

“That’s a lie,” he fired off. “Don’t fucking lie to me.”

“I’m not lying. You think I… you think what - you think I want this? I want you to piss me off?”

“I know you do.”

Iris was blazing now, angry enough that her hands were flirting with curling into fists. He had accomplished that much. 

“Right,” she said, “sure. I want you, and you don’t want me. And I guess you antagonize me for no reason? I guess you try to make me mad for no reason? You fucked me last Friday for no reason?”

Her eyes widened after she spoke, almost as if she had shocked herself by saying it. But she kept her gaze on him, a familiar challenge in her eyes. 

“I thought we weren’t bringing that up,” Draco said evenly.

“You’d like that,” she replied. “You’d like to forget about that, yeah? Because you know what that means? It means you - you want me. You want me, too.”

“No, Iris. I want to forget about it because it was a _fucking mistake_. You’re a fucking mistake.”

“Don’t call me a mistake.”

“I’ll call you what the fuck I want to call you.”

And somehow they were closer together. Closer than they had been before. He wanted to get closer to her when they were arguing so that he could tower over her, look down on her as she spoke. She wanted to get closer because when she got vicious she spoke quietly and she wanted him to hear every word. 

“You arrogant piece of shit,” she hissed.

“Who’s calling who names now,” he shot back, his voice quieter too, an edge of something. 

“Because you deserve it.”

A breath. Another breath. They were breathing together, big breaths in, angry huffs out. He needed to know, needed to know if…

“Did you tell anyone?” He spoke practically in a whisper, staring down at her. Daring her to say yes, to tell him that she had defied him. 

“No,” she said instead. She wasn't lying. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he did. 

“Not even Theodore…” he trailed off, staring down at her, waiting for her to tell him what he already knew.

“No. I - no.”

“Keep it that way,” he said. 

He didn’t know who leaned in first, but their lips crashed together, moving against each other with fervor. The knowledge that he would hate himself for this later, that he would find it disgusting as soon as he got home, flashed through his mind. He dismissed it - fine. He would just have to fuck her quickly, do it before his rational mind had the chance to take over. 

Her hands made quick work of his buttons and his hands did the same. He didn’t bother taking her skirt off, just pushed it up again. She pushed the shirt off his shoulders, running her palms over his skin. Pressing down. 

They weren’t skirting around each other this time. They knew what was about to happen, what they were both allowing to happen, and they wanted to get it over with quickly. 

They were by his desk this time, and he pushed her back against it. Her arms stayed around his neck, then strayed down his back, then went to his sides. She pressed in, held him steady. Undid his zipper.

He wouldn’t flip her around, then. He would let her face him so that her hands could stay like that. 

She gasped as he entered him, squeezing her eyes closed in a wince. He hadn’t exactly prepared her last time, but at least he had done _something._ Her nails dug into his skin. One on his shoulder, one wrapped around his back. 

She relaxed as he kept going, not that he cared. She could fucking hate this, she could, and he wouldn’t give a fuck. As long as he was getting what he wanted. 

Only that wasn't actually true. He had been pissed off at the mere thought of her not liking it last time. 

So maybe he did feel the sting of satisfaction when her breath hitched. He pushed her head into his neck, listening to her whining in his ear as he fucked into her. Feeling her hands tightening around him. 

He felt her getting closer. It was easy to tell, as easy as figuring out when she was angry. She was sensitive. He liked it, liked doing this to her, in the same way he liked making her mad. It was something of a power-trip. 

“Draco, I don’t -” she started, but her words turned into a sort of sigh as he thrust deep inside her and came himself. 

He gave himself a couple of breaths inside her. Let her nails dig into his skin, let her forehead tuck into his neck, let his hair rub light against his chin. Fuck her, saying his name like that. She shouldn’t talk to him. It was better if neither of them acknowledged what they were doing and who they were doing it with. 

She whined when he pulled out of her. She took her head out from his neck and stared at him, her eyes wide with something. Lust and… and that other thing, that thing he couldn’t place. For a second he thought about leaving. 

He could walk out now. He could leave her squirming on the table with bated breath, wanting him and knowing it. 

But instead he brought his fingers to her clit, watched her eyelashes flutter slightly as she closed her eyes and leaned forward. He pushed her back. He didn’t want her resting on him anymore. She looked an odd mixture of surprised and turned on, confused why he wouldn’t let her touch him and loving his fingers on her at the same time. 

It didn’t take her long. She sounded a bit like she was crying when she came. He had noticed that last time, too. He pushed off her and watched her breathing shakily, trying to come down on her own on the tabletop. 

He could feel the beginnings of the shame, the disgust, licking at the edges of his mind. He couldn’t look at her anymore, no matter how much a part of him wanted to see her try to collect herself, wanted to see her hate herself for wanting him so much. 

In what was becoming something of a pattern, he turned and left.


	13. The Bathroom

_IRIS_

It was a peculiar feeling. An odd mix of shame and hope. Iris spent the whole weekend thinking of him, thinking of what had happened. What had happened _again_. She had been so out of it that even Tracey had noticed it on Saturday night - and if Tracey noticed something, it was glaringly obvious. 

She had explained it away with a quick “sorry, I’m tired,” which had earned her a quizzical look from Sebastian. 

The weekend had been bad enough - she had spent it waiting with bated breath for Monday, wondering whether or not he would acknowledge what had happened or try to ignore it again. Probably the latter, but Iris had always been a bit optimistic. 

Not that it would make her happy if it happened again. It was more like… well, she didn’t know exactly what it was like. If it was possible to dread something and want it at the same time, then maybe that was what she was feeling. 

She knew she hated him, knew she wouldn’t want to go anywhere near him unless she was forced to. And she knew he felt the same. 

It was almost as if she was hoping that their brains would do that thing again. Short circuit. Shove down the inevitable guilt and disgust and let their hands go. 

She wouldn’t want to fuck him with a clear head. She could only do it while she was angry, while she was in the Love Chamber, while she was feeling spiteful and cruel and so, so attracted to him. 

But as soon as she walked in on Monday, she knew it wouldn’t happen. He was back to ignoring her, determined to keep his back turned to her. 

He had done the same thing last week but it felt different now. 

Last week she had wanted to ignore it, too. Until a point. Now, she wasn't sure what she wanted. If she wanted it again. 

And last week, even though neither of them said a word to each other, they had caught each other’s eyes so many times that it couldn’t have been a coincidence. She would look up and find him looking at her, or he would glance around at her to see that she was already staring. 

It was some sort of strange connection. She could never tell what he was thinking by looking at his face - he kept it blank all the time. 

But she thought she had learned other ways to figure him out. The fact that he was looking at her enough to catch her eye meant something. She wasn't sure if it was hatred or lust or… something else, but she knew it wasn't indifference. 

That was the thing. Even though she wasn't sure if she wanted him again, she wanted him to want her. She didn’t want him to be indifferent. 

As much as she loathed Draco’s superiority complex and his need to grab power wherever possible, Iris felt like she had the same urge in her, too. She liked the knowledge that her looking at him might affect him. Might make him think of things he was probably actively ignoring. 

_Definitely_ actively ignoring. 

She toyed with the idea of ignoring it too - an idea that she had fancied this time last week - but she found that she didn’t want to. However she felt about it, whatever complicated mix of emotions existed within her, she didn’t want to forget about it. 

Draco seemed like the type to believe what he needed to. He had survival in his veins - she supposed most people who had been in such close proximity to the war had to. It was wired in him. 

If he needed to forget her, he would. His behavior was proof enough of that. 

The thought pissed her off. She was nowhere near a perfect person, but she had never been forgettable. And the fact that Draco thought she was… she felt a growing need to prove him wrong. 

He ignored her all day on Tuesday, too. Not even a _good morning_. He was really quite disrespectful for a pureblood martyr. But it wasn't as if she was going to start any conversation. 

By Wednesday, she began to slightly envy him. If he was set on forgetting everything that had happened between them, it felt almost unfair that she couldn’t. She had never been wired that way. 

Thursday was no different. 

When she woke up on Friday, though, she thought it might be. Something had happened between them on both of the previous two Fridays of their lives, and she couldn’t help but anticipate something happening again. 

She pulled her hair back in a messy ponytail, instinctively pulling out a couple baby hairs to frame her face. She stared at herself in the mirror, analyzing her features. No, she wasn't forgettable. No matter what, she knew that. 

And he wouldn’t forget her - not if she had anything to do with it. 

She shook her head as she left her apartment. She was acting like she wanted it, like she was as desperate for him as he always said she was. The truth was slightly more complicated.

The truth was that she wasn't sure if she wanted him. She hated him unequivocally. But she couldn’t deny that she loved the feeling of him, liked the way his hands felt on her. She liked looking at him sometimes, watching him mix his potions with all of his sharp angles. But anyone would like looking at him. She wasn't shallow enough to base her opinion off of that. 

Iris didn’t want to touch her mess of feelings about him because doing so would mean devoting a lot of time to him. Time that he definitely didn’t deserve. 

But she did know one thing - she wanted him to want her. 

She liked the look in his eyes as they argued, the knowledge that he was watching her. She liked watching his face rearrange as his body made decisions for him - she liked seeing him hate himself for wanting her. 

And now he was acting like he never liked her at all. 

She got off the lift and ran into Tracey in the Department’s atrium. 

“You look cute,” Tracey said, falling into step beside her and grinning. “Is there an occasion?”

Iris smiled back. “No, just woke up early.”

“Well, let’s make it an occasion. Sebastian and I want to go out tonight.”

“You want to go out every night.”

“There’s nothing better than Friday at the Leaky and you know it. Unless you have other plans?”

Iris smiled again, shooting Tracey a fond eyeroll. “You know I don’t.”

Tracey smiled back. “Theodore’s complaining too, so you two can mope around together while Sebastian and I dance.”

“Sounds like my perfect Friday night.”

They reached the doors to the Love Chamber, and Iris stopped to tap her wand against the handle. The door clicked.

“See you after, then,” Tracey waved, moving off to the Hall of Prophecies where Iris caught a glimpse of Sebastian’s blond mop of hair. She sighed and opened the door, planning on giving herself a minute in the entrance hall to collect herself. 

She stopped short as soon as she looked up. 

Draco wasn’t in the Love Chamber like normal, wasn’t at his desk. He was standing off to the side of the entrance hall, almost completely bathed in shadow. 

He was holding a compact, which Iris immediately recognized as a communication mirror. He had turned to face her, but just shot her a quick look of disdain before turning away and muttering something into the mirror. 

There were a couple of seconds of silence, then Iris heard a girl’s voice say something back. Too quiet for her to hear. 

Iris felt almost frozen. She knew she should go through, cast the nose-blocking charm and stop trying to overhear Draco talking to someone else, but part of her thought that he might get mad at her if he stayed. 

There was something electric about their arguments. They only broke with each other when they were arguing. She could say whatever she wanted to him. She could watch him grapple with whether or not to give in to what they were both thinking. 

When they argued, she knew he wanted her. 

But even though she stayed in the entrance hall for enough time to hear him say something along the lines of “maybe Sunday night” and hear whoever was on the other side say something back, he didn’t acknowledge her presence again.

She felt a bit foolish so she walked in. Straight to her desk. 

It was unfair, really, that she had to work here. She filled her cauldron up and began heating it, reading the Ministry brief. Some nonsense about recreating the components of Amortentia. Shit she had been learning about since her third year at Ilvermorny. 

She both liked and hated days like this. She didn’t have to do as much work, but she got bored easily and her mind was prone to wander. 

It was like the room reminded her of what had happened at her desk two weeks ago. She swore she could sometimes see the outline of her body where it had pressed against the table. Sometimes she could feel the ghost of Draco’s hands on her waist, on her back.

She wondered if it was the same for him. Probably not. They hadn’t done anything on _his_ desk. 

He came into work a couple minutes after she did. 

Neither of them said anything, but he let her stare at him for a second, which was more than she could say about the rest of the week. He was familiarly blank. But his shoulders were tight, so he was definitely a little bit pissed off. 

Yeah. She was learning him. 

She knew if she pushed now, she could probably make him angry with her. It wouldn’t be difficult - she could just mention him coming into work late, threaten to tell Hermione, call him arrogant or egotistical or whatever adjective came to mind. 

But there was something different about him, something that hadn’t been for the past two Fridays. If she tried to argue with him and he didn’t let her, that would be even worse than not speaking at all. 

She wouldn’t be rejected by him. Couldn’t be. 

So she didn’t say a thing. She just went back to work, pouring ingredients into the potion and adjusting the heat with her wand. Iris had made Amortentia so many times that it was practically second nature by now. 

She stared out the window, watching the wildflowers blowing around in the field and the snowcapped mountains standing tall behind them. A bird flew through the sky. Not for the first time, she wondered whether it was a real place they were seeing or if it was just being projected. 

She added ivy roots, drumming her fingers on the surface of her desk. 

She glanced around to look at Draco. His back was still turned. 

He had probably been talking to Pansy. As far as Iris could tell, Pansy had been engaged before - twice - and had dated countless eligible bachelors. She supposed her starting to date some other guy didn’t mean that she and Draco were over. 

They had weathered worse. 

She wondered how Pansy must feel, knowing that Draco would do that for her. He was so prideful. It was difficult for Iris to imagine him accepting second place in anyone's life. She supposed he must really like her. Must love her. They had been together since school. 

She couldn’t imagine loving someone so much that she would let them do that to her. Perhaps she was a little bit prideful, too. Or maybe being around Draco just brought out the worst in her. 

She stirred the mixture, tempted to take off the nose-blocking charm and see if she could smell it yet. It had always smelled the same for her - roses, linen, rain. She wondered if it would change one day.

It had changed for Sadie. She used to smell ink, seaweed, and peppermint. After she met Simon, she had stopped smelling ink and started smelling pine trees - they had met on a hike in a pine forest. It was all very romantic. 

Iris remembered when they had first made Amortentia her fourth year, she had lied to her boyfriend and told him she smelled his cologne. It was all very dramatic at the time, but it seemed so simple looking back. 

It was funny how that was. At least she had known what was going on with her boyfriend back then. Michael had been reckless and slightly stupid and they both liked each other. 

She supposed the reason it was complicated wasn’t just Draco. She had been complicating it for herself. Thinking about him, hypothesizing about his exact thought process, without saying a word. Putting herself in situations where she thought he would have to talk to her. 

Well. She could talk to him, too. 

She could. But she didn’t. 

Eventually, the clock rang. She glanced towards the door, expecting to see Draco making a beeline for it, but he wasn't. He was staying behind, putting his potion in vials. He usually did that before the end of the day - maybe he had just lost track of time. 

Iris turned around and did the same. She could hear him working behind her, liquid pouring and glass clinking. 

She knew something would happen before it did. She wasn't sure what would happen, but there was a sort of rush in her body and her heart sped up a little bit. Sometimes your body can predict the future a little bit, even when your mind can’t. Especially when your mind can’t. 

When Iris turned around, he was looking at her. A couple of vials of Amortentia hovered around him in the air. They were completely still, not shaking at all. Intense concentration. But everything Draco did was intense. 

She gave him eye contact, sending all of her confusion and anger and everything else through her eyes. If he wanted to be blank, she would be the opposite.

He didn’t say a word, though, and his face stayed the same. He angled his jaw slightly towards the door as if he was about to look away from her. 

She didn’t plan on speaking, but her body stepped in again. Circumventing her mind. You have to do that sometimes to say what you really mean. 

“You haven’t said a word to me all week,” Iris said. 

Draco just looked at her. Silence. She wouldn’t let it happen. She had spoken and he would say something back. He would. He had to. 

“So say something, then,” she continued, raising her eyebrows. 

He paused for a while, but Iris could tell by the angle of his head that he would speak. If he wanted to ignore her, _really_ wanted to, he would’ve left like usual. He never lost track of time, not really. He never made mistakes like that. 

“Is there something you want me to say?” He asked. His tone was nonchalant. He was good at that. Iris wished she was better at disguising her emotions sometimes, but they were the only things she could use to get a rise out of Draco.

“Besides the obvious?” Iris asked. 

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Draco said. 

“Yes,” Iris countered, “you do.”

She could have waited for his reply and tried to continue the argument. But he had a way of outmaneuvering her, and she wanted to win this time. So she turned, grabbed her bag, and strolled out.

She toyed with sending him a look over her shoulder, just to see if he was watching her. But she didn’t. Besides, part of her already knew that he was.

Tracey was waiting outside with Sebastian and Theodore in tow. 

“You take forever to get off work,” Tracey said, rolling her eyes and holding her hand out for Iris to grab. 

“Just bottling up potions,” Iris smiled, waving at Sebastian and Theodore behind her. 

“Tracey thinks everyone takes forever to get off work,” Sebastian said, “probably because she stops working an hour before the end of the day.”

Tracey shoved him, rolled her eyes, and kept walking, tugging Iris along. They packed into the lift, and Iris zoned out slightly as she listened to Tracey go over their plans for the night. 

The plans were the same thing that they did most Friday nights - going to the Leaky Cauldron and drinking half the menu. They agreed to stop by Tracey’s so that she could change out of her work clothes, and Iris would just borrow something from her. 

Sebastian and Theodore never changed out of their robes. Theodore “preferred to look classy,” and Sebastian just wanted to see how many girls he could pick up even when he looked more like he was at the Ministry’s Christmas Eve Ball than at a bar. 

By the time they got to the Leaky, all the booths were taken. Sebastian and Tracey played rock paper scissors to see who would have to get a table for the night - Tracey won, so Sebastian disappeared to go try to convince people to give up their seats. 

Tracey brought Iris a fizzing pink drink that tasted surprisingly rich. Theodore knocked back a couple shots of firewhiskey, Tracey tried some firewhiskey and gagged, and Sebastian eventually called out to them that he had found an empty place to sit. 

It was impossible not to feel alive on a Friday night at the Leaky Cauldron. The enchanted balls of light hovered above, pulsing to the beat of the song playing and creating rainbow patterns on everyone’s faces. Music pumped through the floor, people’s hands waved in the air, and the drinks warmed Iris’s throat up. 

Tracey seemed drunk even when she was sober, but when she was drunk she was truly a delight.

Iris found herself relaxing further and further into her seat, absentmindedly watching the colored lights reflect on Sebastian’s face as he stared across the floor. Probably figuring out which girl he was going to try it on with. 

The bell above the door had been ringing consistently all night - so much so that Iris barely noticed it anymore. 

Sounds of laughter and music and loud conversations drifted all around her, and when Tracey dragged her up to dance she let her. 

She left her drink on the table, grinning to herself as Tracey made her way across the floor, parting the crowd with pointed shoulders and towing Iris behind her with a hand clamped tightly to her wrist. 

Finally, when they reached the middle, Tracey turned around and smiled back. 

When people are doing what they love, they look different than usual. It’s like they’re glowing from the inside out, commanding attention from everyone around them. When Tracey danced, she could have absorbed all the floating lights into her body. 

Eyes closed, hands in the air, a soft smile on her face as the chords of the music thrummed through her body. Her fingers curled and straightened out, their own little dance, and she moved her body with such a grace that it seemed like she had practiced dancing to this song a million times. 

Iris smiled. She wondered whether she would ever look like that to someone. 

She closed her eyes, put her hands in the air, and started swaying slightly. She had never heard this song before, but it was deep and rough and loud. Whoever was singing had one of those voices that grated on you. Perfectly abrasive. 

From somewhere behind her, she thought she heard Sebastian singing along. Amused, she opened her eyes and turned around, meaning to catch his eye and raise her eyebrows at him. 

Instead, the sound of the bell ringing caught her ears. She glanced towards the door... and saw him. 

In all black. Absorbing the light just like Tracey, but she was glowing and he was just making the place darker. Draco. 

His eyes cast over the crowd, intense and purposeful. 

The music changed, bass pumping through the floor beneath her feet. A girl started singing, something deep. Iris had heard the song before, she was sure, but it had been years. A distant memory. The beat moved quickly and strangely, the singer’s voice switching between low and high effortlessly, echoing slightly. 

“I love this song!” Tracey shouted from beside her, and Iris grinned back, hoping Tracey wouldn’t catch the fact that she was suddenly unsettled. 

When she looked back towards the door, Draco wasn't there anymore. Her eyes darted back and forth, searching for him. She found him making his way towards the bar and watched him say something to the bartender. 

He nodded as the bartender passed a shot glass across the table. It flickered with blue flames. Firewhiskey - the strongest version of it. He knocked it back and didn’t wince.

Then, as if she had willed him to, he turned around. The bartender slid another shot glass across the table. Without turning back, Draco picked it up and poured it down his throat. 

When he looked back down, his eyes fell on hers. He didn’t look surprised at all - he looked like he knew exactly what he was doing. Like he had seen her when he first came in, like he was circling around her just to tease her. 

The song reached its chorus, and all around her Iris heard people trying to recreate the singer’s voice. Tracey was doing a pretty good job of it. But everything seemed muffled - the only thing Iris was focused on was Draco’s eyes. They stared at each other. He was blank, and Iris couldn’t see him well enough to try to figure out what he was feeling. 

But after a couple more seconds, after the chorus ended, he nodded at her and turned to walk away. 

She knew enough to know what that meant. 

“Tracey,” she said, grabbing Tracey’s arm and startling her eyes open, “I’m going to the bathroom.”

“Oh, don’t,” Tracey pouted, “you’ll piss all the drinks out of you.”

Iris laughed. “Good. Someone needs to make sure you get home.”

With that, she pushed back through the crowd, making her way towards the back of the bar where Draco had gone. Fuck. She better be right about this, better have read his signals right. Otherwise she was making a grave mistake. 

The back of the Leaky was surprisingly quiet. Iris could still hear the muffled chords of the song, but she could hear her breath again as it left her mouth in short bursts. She looked around covertly, trying to catch sight of him. 

The bathrooms were down a little hallway. She tentatively took a couple steps down it. What if he had just gone back here to piss and it had nothing to do with her? There was no way she could live that down. 

But she heard his voice. 

“Iris,” he said from behind her. She turned around. He was closer than she imagined him being - how had he gotten so close to her without realizing it?

She supposed the knowledge that she had been right, that he had wanted her to follow him, should be a comfort to her. Instead, his presence was strangely unsettling. She had no idea what was about to happen. 

“Yes?” She said, keeping her eyes trained on his. 

“We never finished our conversation from earlier,” he observed. 

Her heart rate picked up - she could hear it beating in her chest, crashing against her rib cage. If he took another step forward he would be able to hear it too. The song ended. In the couple of seconds of silence following, Draco moved around her and started walking down the hallway himself. 

Sensing that she wasn't following, he turned around. 

“You said you don’t have anything to say to me,” Iris said. 

Draco’s face didn’t betray a thing, and Iris would be slightly too drunk to realize even if it did. 

“Obviously I do,” he said.

“So you’re admitting that you were wrong,” Iris said carefully, but not without a bit of spite. 

“Are you coming or not?”

“My friends are waiting for me,” Iris said. “They’ll wonder where I am.”

“Then lie,” Draco said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

He turned and kept walking. Iris supposed he knew she would follow him. Perhaps if she was just a little more spiteful, she would’ve turned and gone back onto the dancefloor to prove a point. But, in the moment, she wanted to follow him. So she did. 

She couldn’t tell which bathroom they were in. She hadn’t checked, she had just followed him in. She supposed it didn’t matter now - Draco had turned and locked the door. 

Her hands went to his neck on instinct, linking around and holding tight as he pulled her into him. 

She always felt like she was suffocating when she kissed him. 

She could barely hear the music, but she felt the bass humming through the floor. Her hands drifted down his back, tracing the muscles and pressing into his shoulders to ground herself. To remind him that she could do what she wanted, too.

His lips were on her neck, pushing her hair up and sucking into her pulse-point. He could definitely feel her heart beating. More power over her. 

“What is it, then?” Iris asked, her voice coming out wispy. 

“What is what?” Draco said back, pulling out of her neck. He spoke gruffly, as if he would rather not be speaking - but at least he had said _something_ to her. The only thing he had ever said to her before was making her promise not to tell anyone. 

“What is it that you have to say to me?”

There was a moment of silence. 

“Nothing,” he said after a second, narrowing his eyes slightly. “I just wanted you in here.”

He kissed her again, and it took her a second to close her eyes. His hands were tight - one around her waist, one on the back of her neck. He started moving her, pushing her towards the sink. 

She felt suddenly wrong. She knew what he was going to do - flip her over, push her skirt up and push her legs into the porcelain of the sink. He would fuck her without speaking and she would try to choke back moans and after he was done his fingers would find her clit and she would have to lean against the mirror because he wouldn’t let her touch him. 

And she had liked that. Everything he did to her - she couldn’t deny how it felt. 

But thinking of Theodore drinking in the booth, Sebastian trying to convince some girl to come sit with him, Tracey glowing in the middle of the dance floor - all three of them hated Draco, hated everything about him. 

And so did _she_. It wasn't worth it, whatever this was. It couldn’t be worth it. 

He treated her like an object. She knew enough to know that. And even when she liked it, she shouldn’t let him. She should… she should… 

“Stop,” she breathed as she felt the back of her legs hit the sink. 

He pulled off her lips slightly but kept his hands on her. He could do whatever he wanted to her. He could move her however he wanted. She knew he was stronger than her. 

She wished, for a second, that he _would_ push her around. That he would flip her over like he wanted, make her watch herself in the mirror. But she shook it off, twisting one of her arms out of his grip. 

It couldn’t be him. If she was going to give herself up like that to someone, it couldn’t be Draco. Not again. 

“Stop?” He asked, a little bit of anger seeping into his tone. Familiar anger. 

“Yeah,” Iris said. 

“What?”

“I - I don’t… I don’t want it,” Iris said. He let go of her waist. Still so close to her. She refused to meet his eyes, instead staring at her feet on the ground. 

She pulled up the strap of her shirt, moving it back in place. Without looking up at him, she walked around him and towards the door. 

“That is a fucking lie,” Draco said from behind her. 

She turned around. His hair was ruffled. His jacket was hanging off his shoulders strangely. His belt was undone. She ached for him again. Fuck. It would be easier if he didn't look like that. His eyes bore into her - it would be so easy to go to him now, to let him. Let him have what he wanted from her. 

He did want her. At least that much was true. 

But she couldn’t want him. Not like that. It was psychotic, wanting him to do those things to her, when he was who he was - arrogant, cold, confusing. Probably a war criminal. Her strap fell off her shoulder and she adjusted it again. 

“It’s not,” she said, then pushed open the door to the bathroom. 

They had been in the women’s. There was a different song playing, an old one that they used to like back at Ilvermorny. She felt more drunk than she had, like the music was pushing in and out of her head, like every step she took she was leaving a version of herself behind. 

Tracey was at the booth again when Iris got back. 

“Did you get sick?” She asked, scooting over so Iris could slide in. “You were gone a while.”

“No, just drunk,” Iris grinned back. Tracey seemed to accept that. 

When Iris looked up, though, Sebastian was shooting her a quizzical look.

But he didn’t say anything, and they kept drinking and dancing, and eventually Theodore apparated Tracey and Iris back to Tracey’s apartment, where Iris crashed on the couch.

As she drifted to sleep, her thoughts turned to how Draco had looked at her as he left the Leaky. It was a quick look - thrown over his shoulder so that to anyone else it would look casual and meaningless. 

But she could see something in his eyes. Something she couldn’t really place. Something that, for the third week in a row, made her anxious to go into work on Monday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed! I have a super busy week this week so I might not update until next monday but I'll try my best to get you another chapter by thursday! xx


	14. Frustration

_DRACO_

He pushed out of the Leaky Cauldron. The summer air was no better than the crowded interior of the bar - he still felt stuffy and cramped. At least it wasn't as noisy. 

A couple walked out behind him and he stood aside to let them by. He didn’t recognize either of them. The girl laughed, hanging onto the guy beside her, leaning into him. He didn’t seem to mind. 

Draco walked the other direction, trying to clear his head before apparating. It wasn't late - it had only been dark for a couple hours - but he found himself strangely exhausted. Or maybe just frustrated. 

He had always found it difficult to differentiate between his emotions. Probably because he had been taught to tamp them down in favor of a cool demeanour for his entire life.

He definitely felt wrong, though. He knew that. 

He stopped at the entrance to Knockturn Alley, staring into the sky. The stars twinkled above him. He had been named after a constellation - Draco, the dragon. Pureblood children were often named after stars. They believed they were just as superior and timeless.

There were many times that Draco had wished he could be in the sky instead of on the ground - to watch the war from above, safe with the knowledge that he couldn’t get hurt, that he would outlive them all. 

Pansy hadn’t been named after a star. She had been named after a flower. But she had never suited her name - she wasn't delicate or grounded. She was beautiful, but not in the subdued way that flowers were. She was stunning, commanding attention. She should’ve been a star. 

Iris was named after a flower, too. Life was strange that way. 

Draco considered walking further, but he hadn’t walked into Knockturn Alley for years and didn’t plan on doing it tonight. He had bought the cabinets there at the beginning of sixth year. Just before everything went wrong. 

He apparated home. The lift was uncomfortably hot. He was uncomfortably hot. 

As he opened the door to his apartment and walked into the kitchen, the heat gave way to familiar frustration. He collapsed on his couch, wondering whether it would really be so terrible to fall asleep here. He wasn't sure he could bring himself to get up and walk to his bed. 

As the events of the night poured through his mind, Draco felt slightly sick. He had gone after Iris, really done it, and she hadn’t let him get what he wanted. Fuck. 

He shouldn’t have gone to the Leaky at all. Nevermind how they had left it at work. 

He hadn’t meant to stay late in the Love Chamber earlier, but something in him gave in when the clock rang. He didn’t want to speak to her or hear her speak, but there was some small part of him that secretly craved her. Just her body, though. Just the things he knew she could do. 

And even if he didn’t, he still wouldn’t want her to have power over him. She had grabbed the last word from him at work - _yes, you do_ , she had said, then turned and left. 

Draco knew he couldn’t let her have it. So he had gone to the Leaky Cauldron knowing she and her pathetic group of friends were always there on Fridays. He had gone to take the power back from her, to show her that she could never truly step to him. 

Even though it was crowded and stuffy, stepping into the bar had imbibed Draco with a certain focus. 

He caught sight of Iris immediately. Her hair was pulled up and she was wearing a short pink dress. She was laughing, staring at Tracey Davis, whose curls were bouncing around as she danced.

Draco turned and started walking towards the bar, delighting to himself when he saw Iris’s head turn towards him in his periphery. She noticed him. 

He ordered a shot of firewhiskey, downed it, and let his eyes wander over the bar. Sebastian Daley and Theodore Nott were there, too - of course they were. You couldn’t find Iris without Theodore these days. They were sitting at a booth, talking to each other and keeping watch over one of the girls’ purses. 

He heard another shot glass slam down on the bar behind him, so he reached over and grabbed it, pouring it down his throat. When he put it back down, his eyes found Iris again. 

She wasn't dancing anymore. She was staring at him. He raised his eyebrows - a challenge that he knew she would take. They were playing the same game they always played, and he had just made his move. 

He nodded at her quickly, then looked away, making his way down the side of the bar towards the back of the house. If she followed him - and he knew she would - it would be all the evidence he needed that she was putty in his hands. She was his to do what he would with.

He leaned against the wall, looking for flashes of her pink dress as the lights pumped to the beat of the music. He hated this song, always had. The Gryffindors used to play it during their Quidditch practices when he was waiting by the pitch for Slytherin’s allotted time slot. 

Iris didn’t see him in the shadows by the wall, so he watched her walk by him, taking a couple of tentative steps into the hallway. She seemed apprehensive in a way, as if she wasn't sure if she was supposed to be following him. He smiled at the thought, melting off the wall and walking up behind her.

He loved the way her shoulders tensed slightly when he said her name. She turned to him with wide eyes. 

She knew what she was getting into with him - she had to know. But there was still a part of her that was scared of it. Draco said a couple of empty phrases to her to convince her to walk with him. 

He told her to lie to her friends and smiled slightly to himself when he heard her following him down the hall. She wouldn’t tell this to Theodore Nott. She wouldn’t dare say a word. And not just because she didn’t want her friends to know - she didn’t want to have to admit it herself. 

He saw the shame on her face, the blush she always wore before she gave in to him. She hated herself for wanting him, he could tell that much, and the thought cheered him greatly. Every time she blushed, their power dynamic tipped further in Draco’s favor. 

Once he shut the bathroom door behind them, he thought it would be easy. It was usually easy with her. Iris never put up much of a fight. When she did, Draco usually liked it. 

He had her up against the sink, holding her against the cool porcelain, when her hands had started pushing against him. Telling him to stop, pulling her dress back into place.

Leaving him like this. Lying on his couch, slightly drunk but not drunk enough to fall asleep. Still fucking frustrated. It was uncomfortable and he knew he needed to get off but his body suddenly felt so exhausted that he wasn't sure he could open his eyes or move his hands.

All his limbs felt heavy. He was having a strange headache. It didn’t hurt exactly, it just made him feel strange, as if his brain was slowly expanding. 

As if he was no longer part of the world, not on his couch at all, but up in the sky with the rest of the constellations. He could picture himself from above, lying down, crooked with rumpled clothes and half a hard-on. 

He felt this way sometimes when he drank. Sometimes it made him think about himself differently. 

But not this time. He stared at his body from above and all he could think was that he hoped he could fall asleep soon and stop thinking about Iris. Maybe he would dream about Pansy, or have a nightmare about the war, or have some nonsensical dream that he would only remember for a couple of seconds when he woke up. 

When he did wake up the next morning, his shoulder ached. His body felt cramped and wrong. It had been a mistake to sleep on the couch. He conjured his bottle of firewhiskey without even thinking about it, opening his mouth and taking a swig. 

The fire burned through him, lighting his nerves up. The light streaming through his living room windows was too bright. His body felt dark and heavy, his head strangely light. His mind and his limbs were disconnected. He took another sip from the bottle. 

Not for the first time, he wondered if he was an alcoholic. Probably. At least he was a successful alcoholic. 

He didn’t remember what had happened the night before, or at least didn’t fully contemplate it, until he made himself go into the bathroom and get in the shower. He considered bringing the firewhiskey bottle with him, but that seemed like too much even for him. 

His headache turned from light and buoyant to a throbbing sort of pain as the hot water poured over his shoulders. He leaned against the wall of the shower, the cool tiles of his wall pressing into his back. That’s when he thought of Iris. 

Even thinking her name seemed to make his headache worse. He had pressed her against tile too, a porcelain sink. She had gasped and moved and told him to stop. 

He wondered why she had done that and bristled. The throbbing pain in his head did nothing to alleviate his annoyance. If either of them were going to call it off in the middle of fucking, it should have been him. 

After all, he was the one who didn’t want her. He was the one who tolerated her, who kept her around for times where he needed to feel like he could control something. He was the one who was supposed to be controlling her. 

And right now, she was in control. 

It was, unsurprisingly, not a dry weekend. Draco drank most of the alcohol he had left in the house. He wasn't sure exactly why he did it, but it was something to do. He knew he could stop if he wanted to, but he didn’t want to, and he didn’t want his headache to come back. 

He considered going to the Siren on Saturday, then considered going to the Siren on Sunday, but he wasn't sure he could get it up if he tried and he would rather drink alone. 

On Monday morning when the blinds in his bedroom slid up to wake him up for work, he walked into the bathroom and stared at his reflection for what must have been minutes on end, trying to decide whether or not he looked normal. 

He could feel the flames of the firewhiskey licking at his stomach, clawing up his throat. He was still drunk. He wasn't sure if his eyes had always had a reddish rim or if it was new. People already avoided him when he looked put together, so he didn’t suppose it made much of a difference. 

He was five minutes late to work. He wondered whether Iris was going to confront him or ignore him. She seemed to be on a pendulum lately, swinging between meekness and brazenness. Swinging between hating him and wanting him. He wished she would swing back to wanting him soon. Just so that he could win their perpetual argument. 

As soon as he entered the room, he knew something was wrong. He usually did the nose-blocking spell in the entrance hall, but he had forgotten to. 

For the first time since his first day, he could smell the room. 

It smelled clean and bright. There was something floral, probably the glowing petals that tumbled down from the ceiling above the fountain. There was something else, too, something he couldn’t put his finger on, that smelled sweet and sort of deep - like a vanilla candy.

But all of that was dwarfed by the Amortentia. The bitter tang of black coffee, the sting of peppermint, and the overwhelming scent of Pansy’s perfume. He felt strange, like he was in a dream. His body felt wiry and out of his control. 

Staring at his feet, he gripped his wand tightly and attempted to cast a nonverbal _Naris Oppilo_. He knew it was doomed before he even tried - if he hadn’t been focused enough to remember to cast the spell, there was no way he was focused enough to do it nonverbally. 

He kept trying, though, breathing in the bittersweet smells of the room and feeling the edges of his body get hazy. He wondered whether he should try to say the spell out loud, but the last time he had spoken was on Friday and he didn’t know if he would be able to say it properly. 

He didn’t have time to decide, though, because Iris’s voice broke the air. 

“What the fuck are you doing?”

He looked up at her. Her torso was still facing her workstation, as if she couldn’t be bothered to turn all the way around for him, but she was looking at him over her shoulder. Her face was contorted into obvious confusion. Her hair was pulled up like it had been at the Leaky Cauldron on Friday, a ponytail. 

She usually wore it down. 

As he made eye contact with her, her face changed even more. Her eyes widened slightly and her eyebrows lifted as she took him in. Staring at the rims around his eyes, his messy demeanour. 

The smell of the Amortentia was messing with his head and he knew it. Her eyes were strangely colorful, the edges of her hair backlit by the window. It was so bright. It should probably be too bright for him, but he kept his eyes on her. 

She turned her torso so that her whole body was facing him. She was wearing purple, light purple, lavender. Her ponytail moved slightly after her body did. She regarded him for a second, narrowing her eyes slightly. 

“I asked what you’re doing,” she said. 

Oh. That's right. She had. Draco shook his head slightly, trying to get rid of the haze he found himself in, but he could still smell the Amortentia and the freshness and the flowers and whatever the other smell was. 

“Nothing,” he said. The gait of his voice was different than it usually was, but he didn’t know how to fix it. Everything about his movements was slower - not more calculated, just less sharp. 

“Oh,” she replied, turning back to her desk, “you’re drunk.” She inclined her face slightly, her profile still facing him. “...Again,” she tacked on, murmuring but clearly wanting him to hear it. Her words had a finality to them, clipped and condescending.

She was speaking to him as if she was his boss, as if she was Granger, and he hated it. She had no reason to be lording herself over him, nothing that made her superior to him at all. It was the opposite. 

But lately she seemed to think that she _was_ better than him, that she _could_ control him if she wanted to. 

The problem was that he was too out of sorts to properly demonstrate otherwise. 

Instead of speaking again, he shot her a middle finger and cast his eyes towards his desk. They were supposed to be using the stores of Amortentia that they had been making for the past week to test the effects of the various artifacts in the room. 

He was in no right mind to pour potions into vials and measure out ingredients, much less do actual experiments. He was beginning to think that he should have called in sick after all and began entertaining the idea of leaving early. 

Draco had never been someone who let his own ideas influence him too much. Some people allowed their impulses to rule them. 

Pansy was like that sometimes - when a thought popped into her head, no matter how stupid, she would obsess over it. She couldn’t get it to leave, so instead she would devote her brainpower to convincing herself that it wouldn’t be so bad after all. 

At school, her impulses had taken the shape of skipping classes and sneaking around the castle at night. After school, they had manifested themselves in random trips to France and three engagements. 

But despite the fact that he wasn't the type to, Draco found himself obsessing over the thought of leaving work and going home. If he didn’t have another drink soon, his headache would come back. He could just tell Granger and Shacklebolt that he was ill. 

He did _feel_ ill, so it wouldn’t be much of a lie.

The smell of the Amortentia fountain two meters away from him was doing nothing to relieve his frustration - frustration that had somehow carried over from Friday night. He hadn’t gotten off with Iris, hadn’t seen Pansy, hadn’t gone out on Saturday or Sunday. 

He gripped the edges of the table, using most of his brainpower to keep himself from walking over to the fountain. Getting closer to the smell of Pansy’s perfume could not be good for his psychological health. 

“You do know what we’re supposed to be doing, right?” Iris’s voice cut through the silence for the second time. 

She was confident today - he wondered what had happened over the weekend that had given her the nerve to insult him. Well, he didn’t have to wonder. He knew. Between the two of them, she was the one with the power. For now. 

“Yes,” he replied. His voice sounded close to normal. 

“Then why aren’t you doing it?” She asked. 

He sighed, turning around to face her. The smell of the Amortentia intensified. Maybe he had accidentally taken a step closer to the fountain. 

She was leaning back on her desk, facing him. 

“What makes you think you can speak to me like that?” He asked. 

She shrugged. “I don’t know - the fact that you aren’t doing your work? You had a lot of shit to say about it when I wasn't.”

“I’m ill,” Draco said.

“You’re drunk,” Iris shot back, pushing herself off her desk. “And irresponsible. And I don’t want to deal with the fallout.”

“You don’t have to deal with anything.”

“I have to deal with you.”

“I’m sorry,” Draco allowed, “I had no idea my standing at my desk was affecting you so greatly.”

“It’s not. I’m just pissed off that you’re not working.”

He paused, trying to shake off the drunkenness and the hazy scent of the room. He couldn’t, not really, but he could keep a clear head through most situations. Probably something to do with having to stand for hours on end after getting _Crucio_ ed.

“You love getting pissed off with me,” Draco said, pushing his shoulders back to assume his normal posture. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were starting this argument for something else entirely.” He paused. “And I’m not sure I know better.”

Iris broke eye contact, staring at the ground a couple paces away from her and scoffing. She looked back at him with anger in her eyes - but a hint of something else, too. A little bit unsure. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. She knew exactly what he meant and he knew it. There was always a hint of something in their arguments, a suggestiveness. If fucking was arguing, it followed suit that arguments would have a peculiar edge to them. 

“You know what I mean,” he said. 

For a second, he thought he might try it with her. It probably wouldn’t be difficult. And he needed… he had needed someone since Friday. Since she had pushed him away from her. 

“I’m not going to fuck you for fighting with me,” he said. Arrogant and cruel. Testing the waters. He _would_ fuck her, he probably would, if they were carrying on like this. The smell of the room was so strong that it convinced him that that fact was normal, fine, that there was nothing wrong with it. 

“That’s not what I want,” Iris said. But it was. It had to be.

“It is,” he said, willing her to step towards him, to start it. It was better when she started things, much better, because later he could convince himself that he had never meant to do it in the first place. 

“I was the one who stopped it last time, not you,” she said. Her own bit of arrogance - Draco hadn’t expected that. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said as evenly as he could. 

They both knew that he knew exactly what she was talking about. It hung in the air between them as they stared each other down. 

She could easily insult him now. She could take more power from him. She could remind him of exactly what had happened and remind him of how exactly he remembered. 

Instead, she didn’t say anything. He wasn't sure it was a conscious decision. Perhaps Iris didn’t have the part of her brain that Draco had, the part that knew when to go in for the kill. 

“I’m leaving,” he said.

“You’re not serious,” she said back.

“I told you. I’m ill.”

He grabbed his bag and left the room. He heard her take a couple of steps behind him, but he wasn't sure whether she was walking towards him or away from him.

He didn’t bother walking home. He apparated back, stared at the ground in the lift upstairs. As soon as he opened his door, he grabbed the bottle of firewhiskey that he had left on the counter and took a long sip. Too long. His eyes squeezed shut when he finished and he took a shaky breath. 

In terms of coping mechanisms, alcohol was better than his previous methods. They had included not leaving bed for a month during house arrest, breaking his wand twice, and sending explosion charms into the china cabinet at Malfoy Manor. 

Not leaving his bed had, not surprisingly, left him with exaggerated eyebags and a sallow complexion. He had looked so much like his father that his reflection made him want to vomit, so he had started eating again. 

He had broken his wand the first time because he wanted to get a new one, one that had never been loyal to Harry fucking Potter. He had broken his wand the second time because he had needed to break something. 

He liked his new wand fine, but going to Diagon Alley to get a new one during those first couple of years had been so terrible that it might as well have been torture. The entire wizarding world seemed to have banded together to make him feel like the worst person alive every time he had tried to go out in public. 

And breaking all the china in the house had caused his mother to stop speaking to him for a week, which at that time had meant that he had nobody to speak to for a week. 

After his house arrest was over, he had turned to alcohol instead of isolation and destruction. He supposed that alcohol was just a less simple version of isolation and destruction, but he didn’t like to think like that. 

He put the bottle back on the counter. It almost fell. His reflexes were slow, too slow. He felt a stab of fear. He had always reacted to things quickly - it had been the only way when the Dark Lord had been at the Manor. Slow reflexes equated with pain. 

Even without the smell of love magic all around him, he still felt the same sexual frustration left over from Friday. If anything, it was more intense. 

He grabbed the communication mirror from the living room table, his trusty firewhiskey gripped tight in his other hand. 

He opened the compact. “Pansy,” he breathed into it. 

Her face appeared a minute later. An hour later. Ten seconds later. Time was passing strangely. 

“What?” She asked. He knew by her tone that she would say no. He could hear noise in the background. She was probably at a dinner party or an awards ceremony or a museum opening. She was probably with Blaise. 

“Come over,” he said - whispered. He spoke quietly to her. It was the closest he could come to begging. 

There was a second of silence. He felt her “I’m sorry, but” reverberate through the air in his apartment and gripped the neck of the firewhiskey bottle harder. 

“You know I can’t,” she said, “I’ve already been over this week.”

“I didn’t know there was a limit to how many times you can see me,” he said, not bothering to disguise his growing antagonism. 

“Of course you knew that,” Pansy said. She was exasperated too. He hated when she treated him like a child, hated how she spoke to him sometimes when all he was asking was to see her. “I have to go. I’ll owl you later.”

He closed the mirror before she did. Some small act of rebellion. 

He really shouldn’t be going out on a Monday. That was a true low. But he put his firewhiskey down and took the lift to the lobby, walking out onto the hot streets and breathing in the smarmy air, trying to get clear enough to apparate. 

It would serve him right if he splinched, but he didn’t. He ended up outside of the Siren. 

As he had predicted, there was not a very lively scene at the bar on a Monday. 

Luckily, he didn’t have to do much work to get what he wanted. Within five minutes of swinging into the bar and ordering a drink, a girl was sitting down beside him, throwing him glances that she apparently thought he wouldn’t be able to see. 

She ordered a shot of firewhiskey - probably because he had ordered a shot of firewhiskey. Maybe he should switch up his drinking patterns. But he had always been habitual.

She winced as it went down, her face screwing up unattractively. He swept his eyes around the rest of the bar, wondering whether he could do any better. But every other girl who was half-decent looking was with someone else. 

He downed another shot and turned to her. 

“Hello,” he said. 

She looked over to him, trying to appear as if it was the first time she had noticed his presence beside her. She wasn’t a very convincing actor. 

“Oh,” she said, leaning on her hand. “Hi.”

He nodded at her. She squinted at him. 

“I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before,” she said. More unconvincing acting - she clearly knew exactly who he was. She narrowed her eyes further. It made her face look even stranger. “Oh, wait - we were at Hogwarts together!” 

Her realization was obviously feigned and incredibly stupid. If she was going to recognize Draco for something, it wouldn’t be the fact that he was the Slytherin seeker for four years - it would be the fact that he had the Dark Mark on his arm. 

He raised his eyebrows. 

“Melissa Stewart. Remember?” she said. 

“Oh,” he said, “of course.” He had no idea who she was. He didn’t want to know who she was, didn’t want to know anything about her. She was nothing special, but he wasn’t expecting anything special on a Monday night. 

He talked to her noncommittally for the next ten minutes, nodding his head when she paused and taking a couple more shots. At some point, she alluded to the bar being “crowded,” which was ridiculous, but Draco went along with it so that they could leave. 

Her apartment was above some restaurant on Diagon Alley that Draco thought had closed years ago. It was cramped and tiny and he didn’t want to look at the posters on the wall and the books on the shelves because he didn’t want to know anything about her. 

He didn’t want to remember her, didn’t want to remember this night. All he wanted was to take out his frustration on someone so that he could sleep soundly. 

She let him. She didn’t speak the entire time, and her hands were clumsy and wrong on his arms. He didn’t care. 

Afterwards, she tried to roll over next to him. He stared at her ceiling, wondering whether he was drunk enough to get sick. He wouldn’t mind blacking out right now besides the fact that he didn’t want to stay over at this girl’s house. 

“I didn’t want to tell you this earlier,” the girl said, “but I always thought you were so cute back at school.” She spoke as if she was sharing a joke with them, something they would laugh about later. He couldn’t remember whether her name started with an M or an N. 

He looked over at her and she was somehow less attractive than she had been at the bar. Her bed was small and she was dangerously close to him. 

“I have work tomorrow,” he said, pulling his trousers up and expertly buckling his belt. She looked slightly put out. 

“Well, you could leave your number with me?” She asked. 

Draco wondered what had made her so optimistic that he would want her in the future. Perhaps she was one of those people who truly believed the best for themselves. She was probably better than him in that way. She probably wasn’t self-destructive, wasn’t self-loathing. Her insecurities were probably small things that her friends convinced her didn’t exist. 

“I don’t think I will,” he said, running a hand through his hair.

“Oh,” she said, but more to herself than to him. She stared at her bedsheets. He couldn’t really see her that well in the dark, which he supposed was all well and good because he didn’t particularly want to. 

Pansy would never let him say that. She would come back at him with a thinly veiled reference to fucking other men and refuse to communicate with him for weeks if he ever tried it. 

Draco wasn’t sure he could like someone who wasn’t terrible, who wasn’t self-destructive. As he left the girl’s apartment, still drunk and wired, he wondered whether that was horrible. He supposed it didn’t matter either way. It was true. 

His apartment smelled strongly of alcohol. 

I don’t think I will, he had said, and the girl had said oh. He grabbed another bottle. He was still frustrated, still a little bit hazy, and it pissed him off that going out and fucking someone hadn’t sated him. 

Iris wouldn’t have let him say that shit either. She would have kept eye contact. She would’ve at least done that. 

He went through the rest of the firewhiskey in his cupboards and instead turned to some fruity drink Pansy had left a while ago. He couldn’t really taste the difference. 

When he thought about it, he could see that what he was doing was terrible and unhealthy and destructive. But it didn’t feel that way. It didn’t feel that bad. He was just drinking. He never had nightmares when he drank, anyway, so there was an excuse. 

He spilled part of the drink onto his bedsheets and watched lazily as they stained part of them purple. He could clean it later, he knew a spell, but he couldn’t do it properly right now and he didn’t want to try. 

He ended up waking up with a hangover, which he supposed was an improvement to waking up drunk. There was no more alcohol in the house. 

The more he thought about it, the less reasons he could come up with for why he had drank that much in the first place. He stood up and could walk steadily enough. There were three empty bottles of firewhiskey on the table in the living room. The light hurt his eyes. 

He sent his owl away with a hastily scrawled note addressed to Granger and Shacklebolt informing them that he was still feeling ill and wouldn’t be able to come into work.

He had never treated work like this before. He had never treated life like this before, except for those two years of house arrest when he hadn’t been living at all. 

The morning sky looked strange and cruel. Draco wasn’t sure he understood his own impulses anymore. 

Maybe it was still Pansy that had made him drink all the whiskey in his house, some sort of retroactive reaction. Maybe he was just fucked up. Maybe both or neither or some amalgamation of the two. 

Either way, Pansy hadn’t come over last night. Of course she hadn’t - he had known she wouldn’t. But now everything between them felt different, different than it ever had before. 

Probably because of Blaise. Or because he was getting older and wasn’t sure he wanted to play their games anymore. Maybe it was something else that he refused to acknowledge, something right under the surface of his subconscious - that place you simultaneously know and ignore. 

Whatever it was, he felt like fucking shit. 

He lit a cigarette with his wand. His hands weren’t shaky anymore and he could do spells without slurring his words. Nonverbals were another story, but he didn’t have to worry about that when he was home alone. 

He wondered whether he should clean up, but instead decided to amuse himself by watching the smoke from his cigarette curl up into the air and think about how much he hated this fucking apartment. It was very nice and there was nothing wrong with it. His landlord didn’t treat him any differently for being a Malfoy, which is more than he could say for most wizards. 

And it was close enough to Diagon, to work, that he could walk home. 

But he found himself suddenly hating Diagon too, and hating work more. 

Hours passed and cigarettes turned to ash. His body heated up in the sun, so much so that it became uncomfortable. He took off his shirt instead of moving and stared down at his pale skin. He had a bluish complexion and he hated it. 

It suited him, though. He was always cold, had always been cold, would always be cold. His meanness was cunning, not burning. His ambition was manipulative, not driving. 

Someone knocked on his door at some point, and he closed his eyes and ignored it. It was probably his neighbor wondering if he had any Dreamless Sleep, and he didn’t want anyone to see the state of his apartment at the moment.

The knocking was strangely persistent, though, so much so that it began to give him a headache. 

Finally, he hoisted himself off the couch. His body felt slight and wiry. His head felt like it was floating again.

He walked to the door with padded feet, meaning to open it up a crack and see who needed him so very badly, but as soon as he started opening it a hand pushed it quickly from the other side. 

He stepped back, disoriented and annoyed, and the door swung towards him. 

Iris’s eyes cut into his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for no update thursday! I might throw in some surprise chapters between updates to make up for it ;) hope you enjoyed this chapter!


	15. Sick Day

_IRIS_

The series of events that led Iris to Draco’s apartment door were swift and, looking back, perhaps lacked some critical judgement on her part.

She was already pissed off at him for leaving halfway through the day on Monday with the pithy excuse of being ill, and she wasn't planning on letting him off the hook. 

So when she opened the door to the Love Chamber Tuesday morning and saw Hermione Granger’s patronus in place of Draco, immediate anger licked at her stomach. 

“Hello, Iris,” Hermione’s otter said, “I hope you’re doing well! I just wanted to inform you that Malfoy is still feeling ill, and he won’t be able to make it in today. In light of this, Minister Shacklebolt has decided to give you an extension on your current project. Wishing you well!”

With that, the otter dissipated.

Iris sighed audibly, not bothering to put her things down. 

Draco was definitely not ‘still feeling ill.’ The truth was probably closer to ‘still feeling _drunk_.’ The double standard that he had created between them - the one in which she was punished for doing anything less than perfect work but he could fuck off whenever he wanted - annoyed her to no end. 

She could go to Granger and report him. That’s what she should do. 

But there was some vindictive part of her that wanted to confirm her suspicions - that he was lying - and confront him herself. She had never been one to shy away from conflict. Quite the opposite. 

So it stood to reason that she wanted firsthand witness to the look in his eyes when she told him that she was going to report him to Granger. 

Which was the main reason she found herself knocking on his door at ten in the morning. 

There was no answer. She knocked again. No answer. 

After her third knock was greeted with continued silence, she wondered whether he might not be home at all. Maybe he had gone out last night and stayed the night somewhere else. It was a Monday, though, and going out on a Monday would be strange even for him. 

She knocked a fourth time, resolving to leave if he didn’t answer. Maybe he was somewhere with Pansy. 

Just as she was about to turn away, she heard movement from inside his apartment, a metallic click as he grabbed the doorknob from the inside. 

Knowing he would probably only open the door a crack and close it as soon as he saw that it was her at the door, Iris pressed her hand against the wood and pushed it open herself. 

Draco took a step back, his feet bare, and let out a little noise of indignance. Her eyes flicked from the ground to his face. 

She had known he would be drunk. She had known he was probably somewhat disheveled. She hadn’t exactly been expecting this, though. 

He was still wearing the same pants that he had been wearing at work on Monday - or at least the same belt. She recognized the silver buckle, a strange shape that looked snakelike. They were creased with wrinkles.

The rest of him wasn't much better. She couldn’t make out the details of his body that well - he was backlit by the windows in his living room - but he definitely wasn't wearing a shirt. His posture seemed more heavy than normal - his shoulders hung lower and his stomach folded slightly. 

His hair was sticking up at odd angles, their edges silvery-gold in the sunlight. He cocked his head slightly, eyebrows knitting over his eyes, surprise changing to annoyance as he recognized her.

Not wanting to stand in the hall and stare at him anymore, she side-stepped the door and walked into his apartment. Draco’s eyes tracked her as she moved. 

“I don’t remember fucking inviting you in,” he said. He spoke without his normal clear enunciation - the words ran together slightly. 

His apartment smelled very strongly of alcohol - so much so that Iris could almost taste it. There were empty bottles scattered around on most available surfaces. Most of them had the unmistakable blue and orange sheen of firewhiskey. 

She looked back at him. His eyes were narrowed, his body turned at an odd angle. He was still facing the door, expecting her to leave, but his face was turned towards her. 

She could make out his features better now. The red rims around his eyes were worse. His pupils looked blown out, dilated so that she could barely see the color of his eyes.

But it was his neck that really caught her attention. Trailing down the side of it, right below his ear, there were a couple marks that she couldn’t make out in her periphery. Her eyes caught on them and she glanced down.

Oh. Love bites. She blinked, thinking back to Monday. They definitely hadn’t been there at work. So he _had_ gone out last night. 

She felt a flare of annoyance shoot up in her. It couldn’t have been Pansy who gave them to him, not now that she was dating Blaise Zabini. So it was somebody else. Somebody random, somebody that he had gone out and met on a Monday night. And he was sacrificing work to do it. 

Only she wasn't sure whether or not him missing work was the sole cause of her growing anger. 

He had every right to be having sex with people. Other people. People who weren’t her. She had turned him down, anyways. He probably thought that he _couldn’t_ have sex with her. 

But there was no way he could really think that - not with his superiority complex still firmly in place. Either way, she was thinking about this way too much. 

He raised his eyebrows and turned his body towards her, still waiting for her response to his original statement. He blinked slowly, his reflexes dull. 

“Go clean up,” Iris said, not acknowledging the fact that he _hadn’t_ invited her in. “See if you can’t do a glamour on your neck.” It was a spiteful thing to say, but she had come here with the sole purpose of being spiteful anyways. 

At the word _neck_ , Draco looked down, seeming to notice the marks for the first time himself. He furrowed his brow. 

Iris resisted the urge to scoff. So he didn’t even remember the girl he had fucked last night, then. It was typical of him, really - proof of his arrogance and self-serving nature. 

But part of her felt vindicated. The other girl hadn’t been memorable. She was no competition for Iris. Not that it was a competition. Not that Iris wanted to win. 

It was a little strange how much her thoughts contradicted themselves when it came to Draco. 

“So you don’t even remember how you got them, then?” Iris asked, cocking her head to feign innocence. 

Draco flipped her off, but finally pushed the door closed. Accepting that she wasn't going to leave without making her point. She shook off her thoughts about the marks on his neck. Her point, what she came here to say, was about work, not about who he was fucking. She should probably mention that soon. 

“Fuck off,” Draco said. 

“I’d love to,” Iris replied, “but, as your work partner, I’m afraid I can’t.”

Draco exhaled, a huff of annoyance. “I’m fucking sick. Not meant to be working. Get out of here.” He was speaking in short sentences - more phrases than complete thoughts - as if getting the words out was a challenge. He was still slurring slightly, but he seemed to have gotten more control over it.

“No. You aren’t sick, you’re just irresponsible, and I don’t want to have to finish the new potion by myself.”

Draco rolled his eyes slightly. “You’re perfectly capable of doing it alone,” he said. 

Iris raised her eyebrows involuntarily, then returned her expression to normal at once. Even though he said it in a flippant, pissed off tone, his words were really a compliment. She knew she was capable, and on some level she knew that he knew it too. But to hear him say it surprised her. 

She tried not to let it show, though. 

“I don’t want to do it by myself. You’re using a sick day and you aren’t sick.”

He turned all the way around now, facing her. He dragged his gaze from her feet to her face. It used to make her uncomfortable, but she knew that was why he did it, so when his eyes met hers she just hardened her stare. 

“I might be sick in a second if you don’t fucking leave,” he said. 

Iris took a step forward. He smelled strongly of alcohol and her eyes caught on the marks on his neck again. Just for a second. 

“Oh, what, my presence makes you nauseous now?” She asked. 

“As a matter of fact,” he said, taking his own step closer - always trying to assert his dominance, his superiority, “it does.”

Iris smelled the firewhiskey on his breath. It was mixed with something more sweet-smelling that she couldn’t place. She shook off her train of thought, reminding herself firmly that her purpose in coming here had been to confront him over missing work. 

“I could report you, you know. Granger loves me.”

Draco chuckled humourlessly. They were standing quite close together. Draco was taller than her, much taller than her, even barefoot. She had to incline her neck to stare at him and she despised it. 

“You wouldn’t,” he growled, his voice almost sinister. It was a commandment, an order. She felt the immediate need to push back. 

“Wouldn’t I? It’s a well-known fact we don’t like each other much.”

He looked down at her through narrowed eyes. They were dark, darker than usual. Iris supposed it was the alcohol. He always had a dark look about him, though, even when he was sober. 

His gaze challenged her, but to do what she wasn't sure. 

“If you think I’m going to be able to measure out ingredients in this state, you’re sorely mistaken,” he said quietly. 

It suddenly seemed absurd that they were talking about work. The two of them in this close proximity, with that look in his eyes and his shirt somewhere on the floor behind him and frustration building up in Iris with every word - no, this situation connoted something very different than work talk. 

“I don’t know why I bother with you,” Iris hissed. 

“Yeah?” Draco asked back. His voice was still quiet. “I don’t know why you bother with me, either.”

There was a second of silence. Iris wondered, for a second, whether he might… 

But instead he broke eye contact. She exhaled. It was over. She had… but then… fuck. She should leave. She needed to leave. She should go to the Ministry and report him immediately and not go back to work until he was fired. 

And then she should never speak to him again. 

“Are you going to leave?” Draco asked coldly, taking a step back from her. He wasn't facing her anymore. She could only see his profile. 

“I’m going to report you,” she replied, equally as cold. As she spoke, he turned away from her fully and walked towards the living room. Iris turned towards the door, pausing for a second and listening to his feet pad back across the floor. 

“Sure you are,” he said, but she didn’t turn to watch his face say it. 

She shook her head, pushed her shoulders back, and walked back over towards the door. 

As soon as her hand touched the handle, she heard a crash from behind her. 

She turned around instinctively. Draco was standing over the table in his living room. The sun coming in the giant windows beyond backlit him, giving his body a strange halo. The curves of his back rearranged themselves as he took a step backwards from the table, straightening. 

Her eyes flicked down to see what had fallen. A bottle of firewhiskey. It was lying in a bunch of shards on the ground. He would be able to clean up in an instant if he was in his right mind. 

He was not. 

“Fuck,” she heard him say under his breath. He turned to the couch and started pulling out cushions, no doubt looking for his wand. 

Iris watched him with raised eyebrows as he stumbled around his living room. He was seemingly oblivious to her continued presence in his apartment. 

“Fuck,” he repeated. He moved his hands through the air, inadvertently turning his left palm towards her. It caught the light and she saw a red stain going across it. The glass must have cut him. 

Sighing, she pulled her wand out and sent a quick cleaning spell towards the ground. 

The shards of glass stitched together as the bottle mended itself. Once it was done, it flew back to the table, where it perched unprecariously in the center. Iris put her wand away.

Newly aware that Iris was still in his kitchen, Draco looked up. Anger and confusion dominated his face. At least it wasn't blank. 

“I didn’t need you to do that. Fuck. Leave,” he spat, shaking the hand he had cut as if moving it through the air was going to stop the bleeding. 

“You did need me to do that,” Iris said, narrowing her eyes, “you’re too drunk to function properly.”

He walked towards her, the anger still apparent on his face, and she took another couple of steps towards him for good measure. They were rapidly moving back to the same position that they had narrowly avoided just minutes ago and she knew it. 

“It’s disgusting,” she added for good measure. 

He sneered. A drop of blood fell from his palm and hit the wood floor below him. The sun framed his bare chest. She took another step forward. 

“Disgusting?” He asked, his voice getting dangerously low again. She knew what that meant. Impending disaster. She should turn and walk back to the door. She should do all the things she had already gone over in her head. 

“You don’t find me disgusting, Iris,” Draco continued. “I know you don’t.” 

Always the arrogance. 

“You don’t know anything about me,” Iris countered. 

In truth, she _didn’t_ find him disgusting. She supposed it should be easy for her to find him disgusting in this state. But there was something about his unabashed display of anger, drunkenness, unhappiness… that she liked. 

The red rims made his darkening eyes stand out. His face was thinner and sharper. His hair was messy in the way that warned her that he could mess her up, too. 

Even the love bites below his ear were giving her a challenge. She could be better for him, better than the other girl had been. She would make him remember her.

He cut the remaining distance between them with two steps. He was more assured now, she could see it in his eyes. He probably knew somehow that she would give in. He always had a way of knowing, reading her and figuring her out. He was probably happy to have control over her again, to take something from her that she hated herself for giving to him. 

It was fucked up and she cast it out of her mind. 

“I know some things,” he said. Towering over her again. 

One more push and she knew he would take her. One more move and his hands would be on her. She had known they might end up here as soon as she had made the decision to leave work. 

Saying no to him suddenly felt unreasonable and stupid. What had she been thinking, denying him this on Friday? Denying _herself_ this? Her pride was a small thing to sacrifice, really. 

“What things,” she whispered. Not a question. A statement. She knew what things.

He answered her with his hands. Already rough, pressing into her, pushing her backwards, making her step back once, twice. 

She brought her hands to his collarbones, her fingers extending over his shoulder. She gripped his skin tightly, anchoring herself to him. He was all action now, and she just had to keep up. Keep up and wait for him to give her what she needed. 

She felt her back hit a wall, then her head. He pressed her against it hard. 

“You’ve wanted this since the last time,” he growled at her, “since the first time. You wish you hadn’t said no to me.”

He was right but she didn’t want to tell him so. He was so cruel sometimes, so vindictive. His ego was already big enough without confirmation that she thought of him. That she thought of this. 

His hands drifted from her sides to her thighs, wrapping around her and picking her up in one swift motion. He pulled her to him so that her legs were on either side of him. She instinctively wrapped her legs around him, shaking slightly as her hands tightened, slipping around to the back of his neck. 

“You hoped I would give it to you,” he whispered, slamming her back against the wall again. 

She gasped. His eyes flashed with familiar darkness. 

“Are you grateful, Iris?”

Her legs shook and her back felt cold against the wall of his apartment. He pressed her back hard. Before she could reply, before she could even think about how to reply to that, his lips were on hers. 

Kissing him was a pleasant death. 

He licked her bottom lip, and she opened her mouth obediently, letting his tongue in. He fought with her, pulled apart, sucked her top lip hard, pulled her bottom lip out between his teeth. 

He broke away. Their breaths mingled in the air. 

“Tell me how grateful you are,” he growled. 

He kissed her again before she could answer. Her shoulders hurt where he was pushing her against the wall. His movements pushed her up and down slightly. The friction reminded her of how trapped she was now. Trapped against him. 

He broke apart, leaning his nose on hers and letting her feel his breath against her face. She opened her eyes slightly to find him staring down at her through half-lids. 

“I can’t stand you,” she managed to get out.

He moved his face towards her ear. 

“The feeling’s mutual,” he growled into it, his voice low and gravelly. He tasted like whiskey, smelled like whiskey. His shirt was gone and she had too much clothing on. 

He seemed to be having the same thought, because he tightened his right hand’s hold on her and brought his left hand to the hem of her shirt, tugging it upwards in persistent movement. After a second, she brought her own hands down to help him, pulling her shirt off and letting it drop to the ground beneath her. 

He probably wouldn’t try to take off her skirt. He would probably just push it up. It made sense - he didn’t want to see her in her entirety, didn’t want to admire her. He didn’t love her, didn’t even like her. She was an object to him, an object that he only needed for one purpose. And he didn’t have to go through the extra step of taking her skirt off to achieve it. 

It made her slightly angry to think about. 

It wasn't that she loved him, or liked him, or wanted him beyond having sex. She didn’t. But she did like looking at him, the way his body curved into sharp angles, the way his jaw moved as he looked down at her, the way his fingers trailed up her chest, so lightly, like rivulets. 

Fucking him wasn't just the action itself. It was seeing him, watching him move, watching his hair get messy and his pupils dilate. That was part of it for her, a big part of it. 

It wasn't that way for him, at least not as far as she could tell. He didn’t watch her body move, didn’t react to her hands around his neck or on his arms. 

His mouth was on her neck now and the hand that he had used to tug her hem was pushing her hair back to give him access to the space below her ear. She felt his teeth scrape against her skin, then his tongue and lips following, leaving behind marks that she would have to do a glamour on later. 

Marks like the ones on his neck. 

She turned her face into his - her cheek against his temple, her nose in his hair. He smelled dark, musky and deep. She brought her hand up from his shoulder to the nape of his neck, her fingers drawing into his hair, tangling themselves in. 

He pulled out from her neck, so she pulled her face away from him and back towards the wall. They stared at each other for a second. His eyes were lidded and dark. Hers probably betrayed far too much emotion. Her hand was still in his hair. 

He leaned back into her lips with his usual suffocating precision. It was a gentler kiss - less fighting - but just as merciless. He robbed all the air from her mouth. She felt weak and entranced with the smell of him. 

He let her hand stay in his hair but grabbed her other wrist, pulling her towards his belt. With shaking fingers and without opening her eyes, she fumbled with the buckle, managing to pull the leather through. 

She felt his trousers loosen beneath her hand as he broke away from her. 

Without his bare chest on hers, the cold air of the apartment moved back against her, raising the hairs on her arm. 

He stared at her and she didn’t exactly recognize the look in his eyes. 

But her hands were already on the button of his pants. She pulled them off with one hand, the other still tangled in his hair. It was strange that he was letting her do that - something that was borderline affectionate. She wasn't trying to show him affection, though - he must have known that. She wasn't exactly sure what she was trying to do. 

Draco stepped backwards out of his trousers, returning his free hand to help hold her off the ground as he carried her away from the wall. 

He was moving with complete certainty, too much certainty for someone who was still slightly drunk, but Iris let him. There was no way she would stop him, not in this, not again. 

He deposited her on his couch. The cushions were slightly haphazard from when he had gone through them looking for his wand. 

She knew she would end up hating herself for it. 

But now, lying back on his couch cushions, propped up on her elbows, all she could think of was the way he looked in the sunlight. His hair was silvery-gold. He was lean, sharp, his shoulders at once small and broad. 

She couldn’t explain him besides saying that he was one of those people who looked like a statue. Every inch of him had been wrought with the greatest of care by the greatest of sculptors. 

He leaned over her, on the couch himself now, and his lips returned to hers quickly before dropping lower, to her collarbones. She exhaled, shaky, bringing her hands to his back. Bringing one of them back to the nape of his neck again, tangling in his hair, a challenge. 

He didn’t push her off. The blood from the cut on his hand smeared slightly on her side, leaving strange red marks behind. 

He teased his tongue over her nipple and she bit her lip to keep from moaning. Even when she was like this, even after she had given in to him, she never wanted to seem like she was enjoying it too much. 

She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. 

Then, to her surprise, his hands moved to the waist of her skirt. He unbuttoned, unzipped, and pulled it down her legs instead of pushing it up. Her eyes widened. She felt a strange and sudden need to cover herself. He was going to see all of her for the first time. 

It was silly. Ridiculous. They’d already fucked twice and she didn’t care what he thought. 

He stared at a spot on her stomach for a second, low, near the waistband of her underwear, then his eyes darted down to her legs. When he returned his gaze to hers, she only had time to stare at him for a second before he kissed her again. 

His hand smoothed up her side, from her thigh to her chest. It was steady, not teasing her. Feeling her with assured movements. His other hand hooked under the band of her underwear. 

He didn’t pull them down. Instead, he rested his palm underneath the band, splayed out on her leg. 

She wasn't sure what it meant. His hand, his eyes, his kiss, anything. Whether or not he liked her, thought she was pretty. She felt juvenile for wondering. Regardless of what he thought about her, their dynamic wouldn’t change. They would go on hating each other, throwing out insults and undisguised barbs. 

But she wanted him to like her. She wanted him to think about her legs the way she thought about his hair. Think about the spot below her ear the way she thought about the curve of his shoulder. 

She opened her eyes as he pulled away from her. He didn’t meet them. He was staring at his hand on her leg, toying with the band of her underwear. Focused. He turned his head and the sunlight caught the marks on his neck. 

She couldn’t help staring at them. They were deep red, almost purple. He hadn’t bothered to hide them. He didn’t care. He didn’t even remember the girl who had given them to him. 

He hooked his thumb underneath her waistband and pulled her underwear down easily, his neck moving slightly to reveal a fourth mark, a smaller one that she hadn’t seen earlier. 

She knew she was supposed to be thinking about his hands now. About what he was about to do to her. 

Instead, she felt some shade of what she had felt Friday night. 

Her status as an object flashed through her mind in a way she couldn’t ignore. She was being used, there was no doubt about that, and she suddenly couldn’t abide it. 

“Don’t,” she said. 

His eyes snapped to her at once. Sunlight beaming onto his face. He was all darkness. Angry, she could tell. If she stopped him twice, she would never have him again. He wouldn’t ignore two hits to his pride. 

“Don’t…” he trailed off, offering her a chance to give some alternate explanation, to let him carry on with her. 

“You were with someone else,” she said instead, “it’s not…”

He scoffed. “You want me all to yourself now?”

“No,” Iris replied forcefully, wondering whether or not she should untangle her fingers from his hair or pull her underwear up or push herself away from his hand steady on her side. 

“Then I don’t see the problem,” he said evenly. 

“It’s just… it was only last night, and I have to be at work…”

Draco regarded her for a second, watched her eyes flicker away from him as she fed him her flimsy excuses. She could hardly tell him that she felt used by him. That would invite a whole different conversation, one she did not want to have. 

“She was nobody,” he said eventually, narrowing his eyes slightly as if he was stating some obvious fact that she didn’t understand. “I don’t remember her face, much less her fucking name.”

He moved his face back towards hers, capturing her lips again. She let him kiss her, trying to get a grip on her emotions as his hands pressed into her sides. 

She was pissed off that he didn’t remember the girl’s name. Or she should be pissed off. For some reason, though, his words appeased her slightly. 

He broke apart from her, his eyes daring her to tell him to stop again. 

“If that was me, would you - I mean, would you forget my name?” Iris asked. She hadn’t thought about saying it, not consciously, and as soon as the words left her mouth she felt weak and dramatic. Of course he would, and there was no reason he shouldn’t. 

He kissed her again. She supposed he would ignore the question, which was fine. She would ignore it too. They would both pretend that she had never asked it, that the question of whether or not she was memorable had never been put on the table. 

He broke apart from her, his eyes moving back down, across her chest and her stomach, down to where he had pulled her underwear off. 

She watched him as he pulled them all the way down her legs and over her feet, depositing them on the floor. She was naked now, completely. She felt a bit like she couldn’t breathe. 

He didn’t look at her as he pulled his boxers down, managing to get them over his feet without looking awkward in a move only he could pull off. He threw them down. 

Only then did his eyes return to hers, both of them completely bare.

“No,” he said. It took her a second to remember what she had asked. 

Before she had time to contemplate his answer, he was inside her. 

She inhaled shakily, her hands moving to his shoulders, gripping them to ground herself. Her exhale was more of a whine as he pulled out of her. 

Her heart was beating so loudly that she swore it was moving her whole chest. Every inch of her, every nerve of her, was anticipating his next move. She supposed you weren’t supposed to feel anxious while having sex with someone, but her nerves bordered on adrenaline, heightening her senses. 

She whined again when he thrust into her the second time. His hands rested on either side of her, holding himself up. The pad of his right thumb rubbed against her side. He wasn't looking at her, at least not in the eyes. 

His hair was hanging in his face, staring at that same spot on her lower stomach. She wondered what he was thinking. He was probably trying not to think. He was probably staring at that tiny piece of her and dissociating, wishing she was someone else. 

She bit her lip to keep from moaning again, tearing her eyes away from him and staring at the ceiling. It was high above her. She could try to dissociate too. But she didn’t want to, not really. 

In this capacity at least, she wanted it to be him. 

He sped up his movements, but she kept her lip tight in her mouth and managed to not make any noise. 

One of the hands that had been on his shoulder had travelled back to its familiar spot on the nape of his neck. She moved her eyes from the ceiling back down to the couch as he thrust into her again. 

But this time, he didn’t pull back out. He stayed inside her, raising his head to her. He blinked, his gaze moving from her stomach to her face behind his eyelids. His face betrayed no emotion, but his eyes slowly moved from her eyes to her lips. He stared at them, regarding them almost curiously. 

She wondered how he could be anywhere close to matter-of-fact while they were in this position. She shifted her body slightly, squirming, uncomfortable with how much she liked the feeling of him inside her. 

He squinted slightly, his eyelashes heavy over his eyes, and brought one of his hands up to cup her neck. Before she could give that any thought, though, he moved his thumb from her jaw to her chin, then traced a line across her bottom lip. 

She couldn’t remember the last time she had blinked. She was staring at him with wide eyes, unwilling to let his face go even for a second. 

He pulled her bottom lip down with his thumb, forcing her to release it from her teeth. She could feel his skin, the pad of his thumb, as he pushed it further into her mouth, between her teeth and onto her tongue. 

Still staring at her with a disguised glare, he pulled out of her.

When he pushed back in, it was slow. Almost too slow. She felt her legs quivering slightly as she forced herself to be still, to relax. Without her bottom lip in her teeth, it was harder to disguise her sounds, to force them back. 

She caught a moan in her throat, managing to choke it back, but she felt its vibrations on her tongue and knew Draco could feel them on the pad of his thumb. 

He regarded her again, his eyes snapping up to make direct eye contact with her. He pressed his thumb deeper into her mouth, forcing her to open her lips wider. 

She shut her eyes, trying to focus all her energy on staying quiet. She wasn't sure why she cared so much, not when he so obviously wanted to hear her - but maybe that was the point. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. 

She didn’t know how he felt about it - them. He was probably just using her, she was an object to him, and it would be worse if he knew she liked it. It would be worse if he knew that he had power over her like that. 

But he picked up his pace and turned the palm of his other hand to grab her waist, holding tightly to brace himself against her, fingers pressing deep into her skin. 

Her eyes were still closed but she could tell where he was, how his body was shaped. She could feel his exhale on her cheek - his face was close to hers. She felt him shift, felt strands of his hair drag across her forehead. 

He pulled out. Pushed back in. 

His hair was against her, his thumb dragging her mouth open, and she couldn’t trap the little whine before it left her mouth. 

She opened her eyes instinctively as he exhaled again, a short breath of pleasure. His eyes caught her at once, and they were somehow less dark now. Or maybe it was just a trick of the light. 

Still staring at her, his hair hanging over his forehead, he took his thumb out of her mouth, releasing her bottom lip. His hand returned to her neck, his thumb extending to her collarbone and pressing into the skin right above it. 

“Let me,” he breathed, so lightly she wasn't sure that’s what he had said at all. 

When he thrust into her again, their eyes still locked on each other, Iris let her breath hitch, let herself hum slightly. 

He paused, narrowed his eyes, and did it again. It was a challenge now, a game that she would lose if she was quiet. 

She whined, tightening her hand around his shoulder, tangling her fingers in his hair. She heard his breath catch slightly as he exhaled. He didn’t want to look like he liked it either, she could tell. 

And maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was doing this as some fucked up play for control over her, maybe he just needed to fuck someone and she was the only person readily available. 

But as she turned her head slightly to hear his breath in her ear, as he got closer to her to hear her whine, she thought that there might be some other reason too. 

He trailed his thumb, still wet from resting on her tongue, down her chest with calculated grace. He was steady, always steady. He traced a straight line even as her legs shook around his back. 

He sped up inside her, sending her body rocking against the haphazard cushions of his couch. His hand moved further down her torso, pressing against her stomach, going lower to the place he had been staring at earlier. 

Iris could close her eyes and still see him, still know exactly what he was doing. She had committed him to memory like this, with messy hair and no clothes and steady hands. 

Every nerve ending in her body felt electric, dazzling. He was mapping her out with his fingers. She felt like he was awakening her, touching pieces of skin that hadn’t ever been touched. 

Even the pieces of her that had been touched a hundred times before him found new lives beneath his hands. Her legs, her stomach, her breasts and thighs reincarnated under the curves of his fingers, the sting of his nails and the steady pressure.

She felt somehow new, too. Being with him like this was a second life. She usually hated it, she was usually ashamed of it, but while she was living it she couldn’t imagine going without it. 

His fingers were oxygen. 

She finally did close her eyes when they reached her clit, let her head rock back. 

It was unreal and soon she would wish it hadn’t been real at all. 

She came before him, fingers tightening, inadvertently pulling at his hair. He was close to her, so close. The smell of him surrounded her. He smelled like night, like the moon reflecting over a hidden lake. A secret rendezvous, heavy with musk and still quite a bit of firewhiskey. 

She wondered if he still tasted of it, but he didn’t kiss her. They never kissed once they were fucking. It was somehow more intimate, and if there was something they could both agree on it was that they had no desire to be intimate with each other. 

He kept fucking her after she came, speeding up even more to chase his own high. She let her breath catch in his ear, let herself whine out something that sounded almost like a sob. 

She kept her eyes closed as he came, pulled out of her, murmured a nonverval to clean up. Not as drunk as he had been, then. She didn’t want to see his face and wasn't exactly sure why. Maybe because she was ashamed of what had just happened. Maybe because she was afraid that _he_ would be ashamed, that she would see it in his face. 

She felt his body settle a little bit, still on top of her. His hands didn’t move and neither did hers. 

But he pushed off of her a second later, forcing her hands to fall away from his hair and his shoulders. 

She opened her eyes to find that he was already standing in the kitchen, back turned to her, pulling his belt closed loosely around his trousers. 

He moved fast. Or maybe she was moving slow.

He regarded her. 

“You should go,” he said coldly. She sat up at once, her legs aching slightly, and shook her head to clear it. Fuck. She had work. 

She grabbed her underwear and skirt off the floor, hoping that Draco wasn't looking at her as she pulled them up her legs and onto her waist with quick, graceless motions. 

Her shirt was in the kitchen with him. She didn’t meet his eyes as he held it out to her. She pulled it over his head, made sure she had her wand on her, and grabbed at his door handle. 

She stopped for a second in the hallway, taking a breath and staring back at his door. Fuck, her legs hurt. And she was going to be insanely late for work. 

It was a good thing that Shacklebolt had extended their deadline, because Iris didn’t get much work done once she got back to the Love Chamber. When the clock rang, she already had all her things in hand and was ready to go home and try not to think about what she had done. 

Unluckily, Sebastian and Tracey were waiting for her outside. They usually walked home together, but somehow that fact had slipped Iris’s mind.

Being with Tracey made it easier to disguise that something was off. She easily dominated the conversation with anecdotes about their coworkers and observations about the weather, the new shops coming in on Diagon, and the woman across the street from them in bright orange robes. 

Once Tracey left, though, peeling off onto her street with a big wave and a promise to see them soon, Iris found it much harder to pretend that nothing was wrong. 

Sebastian, for all his rambunctious energy and player reputation, could be very quiet when he wanted to be. He didn’t know - of course he didn’t, how could he - but something in his body language told Iris that he did know _something_ , and he was using silence to try to make her uncomfortable enough to tell him. 

It was the Slytherin in him. 

Iris refused to give in, instead commenting on something that Tracey said earlier about Michael Corner. Sebastian indulged her smalltalk with easy grace. 

But when they got to his street, he stopped and raised his eyebrows at her instead of walking away like usual. 

“Before I go,” he said, a teasing grin taking over his face, “would you mind telling me where you were this morning?”

Iris froze, trying to keep the soft smile on her face as her mind reeled. He was definitely doing this deliberately, but she didn’t know how to dissuade him without telling an outright lie that he might catch her in. 

“I overslept,” she eventually settled on, shrugging her shoulders slightly. 

Sebastian raised his eyebrows even further, his grin spreading. He cocked his head, as if waiting for her to go on - or, rather, to take back her lie and tell him the truth. Iris shifted, unsure.

After the longest ten seconds of silence Iris had ever endured, Sebastian cocked his head, rolling his eyes fondly. 

“You know I know anyways, love,” he said, his voice at once teasing and gentle. “So go on - tell me.”

“Nothing to tell,” Iris said, trying and failing to keep her tone casual. It was times like these that she wished she could be a little bit more like Draco - a little more blank. She wondered what exactly Sebastian thought he knew - there was no way he could have figured out the whole thing.

“So you’re telling me you aren’t getting off with Draco Malfoy?” Sebastian asked. His words still had a playful gait to them, but Iris felt a cold shock run through her. 

Sebastian didn’t seem angry about it, but the fact that he had figured it out left Iris with the realization that she definitely didn’t want anyone else knowing. Draco was cruel and calculating and the object of the wizarding world’s most potent hatred. And he deserved it. 

“Iris,” Sebastian said, snapping her back to their conversation. 

“I don’t know why you would think that,” she said quickly, trying to make up for her delayed reaction. 

“Oh no? I saw you both leaving the bathroom at the Leaky last weekend. Were you at his this morning? I heard he called in.”

Sebastian was grinning at her, teasing, clearly proud of himself for figuring it out and anticipating weaseling it out of her. Iris was not feeling quite as happy. 

“I told you, I just woke up late,” she lied again. A weak excuse and she knew it.

Sebastian’s grin waned slightly as he took in Iris’s obviously uncomfortable expression. When he spoke again, his words were less prodding and more gentle. 

“I won’t be offended, you know,” he assured, “we don’t like the bloke, but he’s fucking attractive, really.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Iris said, casting her eyes towards her shoes on the pavement. 

She glanced back up when Sebastian laughed. He shook his head at her fondly, like she was a child who had come up with a lie so ridiculous that it erased all her wrongdoing. 

“You two spend all day alone together in a room that’s rumoured to have an Amortentia fountain in the middle of it. And you have eyes.” He paused, smiling at her. “I won’t tell the others if you don’t want me to, but you won’t be able to pull one over on me.”

Iris sighed, sensing defeat. At least Sebastian didn’t seem angry or confused. He just seemed like he always did. As if would either make a joke at your expense at any second or give you a hug. You never could tell with him. He had eyes like Draco’s, Slytherin eyes, guarded even when he was grinning. 

Iris couldn’t remember ever seeing Draco smile. 

“Shall I take your sigh as a yes?” Sebastian asked. 

“Yes. Fine. I was at his,” Iris breathed out all her words as one exhale. 

“I knew it!” Sebastian said, looking somehow even more triumphant now that he had confirmation. “How did _that_ come about?”

Iris shrugged. “It just sort of… happened.”

“And now it keeps happening?” He asked, raising his eyebrows and wiggling them suggestively. 

Sebastian’s light commentary put Iris more at ease. Being with Draco had seemed like some sort of dark secret, the worst side of her coming out. To some extent, she still felt that way - she was definitely not proud of it. She wished they would stop. 

But the fact that Sebastian hadn’t turned on her and started hating her as soon as she told him made her feel a little bit lighter. 

“Yeah,” she said, feeling her cheeks getting hot. “Now it keeps happening.”

“Then I suppose he’s pretty good,” Sebastian quipped, making Iris’s blush deepen. 

“Sebastian,” she said, a playful warning, grinning slightly as she looked off to her right towards the setting sun. 

“Right, right, I’ll stop,” he returned, but then kept going. “Theodore and I always said that he’s far too attractive to be good in bed. You can’t have it all. Well - apparently you can, actually. Fancy that.”

“Jealous of him?” Iris quipped back, raising her eyebrows. 

“I wouldn’t take it that far. Let me have one more question before you keep walking.”

“Alright.”

“Youse are just hooking up, right? Friends-with-benefits, like?”

“Well, I wouldn’t really call us friends. But yeah, we are. Just hooking up.”

Saying it out loud felt bizarre and frightening, but Sebastian’s grin and fond shake of the head returned Iris to feeling at ease. 

“Right,” he said, “see you tomorrow.” Then, with a shrug and a wink - “unless you’re busy, of course.”

Iris rolled her eyes, playfully flipped him off, and kept walking. She felt as though a weight had been lifted off her chest. 

She had been so ashamed of everything having to do with Draco. She had scolded herself countless times for her reactions, her admissions, the way she moved around him, the way her eyes found him. 

Part of that had been because she herself was embarrassed. He was an asshole and she knew it. She experienced it firsthand five days a week. She shouldn’t be attracted to a guy like that. 

But another part of it, as she was beginning to realize, was that she knew her friends hated him. Whenever he came up between the four of them, it was always in a solely negative context - him being cruel back at school, his various crimes in the service of Voldemort, his reclusiveness and unwillingness to repent in the eyes of society. 

So for her to reveal to them that she was sleeping with him seemed like a daunting task, an admission that they would completely write her off for. 

And by that logic, she thought she might have to write herself off, too. 

Hearing Sebastian tease her about it, ask her questions with the same gait he used to order drinks at the Leaky, made Iris feel less like a terrible person. 

Draco _was_ attractive - statuesque - anyone could see that. She wasn't sure exactly what harm she was doing by recognizing it and taking subsequent action. 

She stepped into her apartment and pulled up her hair, going over the conversation again in her head. It wasn't wrong, what they were doing. Not really. It couldn’t be, otherwise Sebastian would have told her. 

Otherwise she wouldn’t have the ever-present urge to let it happen again. 

So maybe instead of completely avoiding the topic or talking around it, she should confront it head on. She had always had that confidence, that willingness to say what needed to be said. And now she realized that something did need to be said between the two of them. 

They _both_ needed to confront what they were doing, to figure it out. 

Because she knew now with sudden certainty that it wouldn’t stop. 

She wanted it. _If that was me, would you - I mean, would you forget my name?_

And, despite all of his airs, he wanted it too. _No._


	16. Always Yours

_DRACO_

Wednesday morning dawned, unsurprisingly, with a hangover. 

Draco’s head seemed to move slower than his body as he rose, dully aching. The ends of his limbs felt like they were pulling him towards the ground. His stomach turned, the flames from the firewhiskey turning into claws that pawed at his insides, sending bile up his throat. 

He had always been shit at healing spells, but he managed to numb the pain in his stomach. He could at least do nonverbals again.

He walked down the hall from his bedroom. The living room was a disaster and so was the kitchen. He almost wished that there was a wall between them so that he didn’t have to see both at the same time. 

Bottles of firewhiskey littered the table and the counters, his couch cushions were pulled out all over the place, and there were little spots of blood on the floor from where he had cut his hand. 

He could see a reddish-brown smear on the kitchen wall, too. He didn’t even want to look at the couch. 

He sighed, rubbing his eyes, and decided that he would clean it up when he got home. 

It was becoming harder to make excuses for his own behavior. He had been drunk yesterday morning, or at least a combination of drunk and hungover. That could explain away what had happened, sort of. Mostly. 

And he had been drunk on Friday too. Well, that wasn't exactly true. He had taken two shots of firewhiskey that hadn’t even hit him before he was walking to the bathroom and signaling for her to follow. 

And he hadn’t been drunk the first two times, either. But he could find other things to blame. Sexual frustration, withdrawal from Pansy, the fact that Iris was, in many cases, the closest and only girl available to him. 

They were not the best excuses and he knew it. 

If he was just fucking Iris because she was available, because he needed someone, he should be thinking of her in the same way he thought of the girl from Monday, the same way he thought about all the girls he never cared about. 

By which he meant that he shouldn’t be thinking about her at all. 

But he was. He had been thinking about her all morning. He saw her in his head as soon as he woke up, which perhaps explained the headache. And they weren’t angry thoughts, either - he wasn't thinking about pissed off he was, wasn't thinking about ways to get her fired. 

He was thinking of how she had looked against his wall, against his couch, wide eyes, her lips beneath his thumb, her legs around his back. 

And now he had to see her, to go in to work and compare the properties of Amortentia brewed with and without an artifact. 

He could dismiss her and probably would. He would probably face the opposite wall all day, get annoyed by her footsteps as she walked aimlessly around the room, take notes about his potions and side-eye the clock. 

But part of him wondered what would happen if he didn’t. If he went inside and regarded her with an undisguised gaze, if he walked up to her and brushed her sleeve, if he trapped her eyes in his, what would she do?

He murmured the nose-blocking charm before he entered, tamping down those thoughts. 

Over the years, Draco had found that most girls seemed to confuse him fucking them with him liking them. He didn’t picture Iris being much different, all things considered.

Iris probably had the mistaken notion that he liked her, that he wanted her even when she had her clothes on. Giving her any more attention would only encourage those thoughts in her, and Draco didn’t want to deal with it. 

She turned to look at him as he opened the doors, and he glanced back at her. Her eyes widened slightly. He walked towards his table. 

“I’m surprised to see you,” she said quietly from across the room. Her voice was rife with irony. He breathed a short sigh of relief, glad that she wasn't going to try to change anything between them. Glad she wasn't speaking gently.

“Are you?” He answered in a flat tone, waving his wand and nonverbally summoning all the ingredients he needed to brew. 

“Thought you might turn up sick again,” she muttered. Draco raised his eyebrows at the wall, wondering whether she meant to remind him of what happened yesterday or if she just wanted to be pissed off at him. 

“You’re sadly mistaken.”

She scoffed, cutting off their conversation. 

They didn’t speak again for a couple of hours. Draco busied himself brewing his first vat of Amortentia, a task that he could do with his eyes closed and hands tied. The challenge would be adjusting the properties for his second brew with the artifacts. 

He never forgot Iris’s presence, though. Her every movement was loud and attention grabbing. He used to think she did it on purpose, but every time he glanced over to her she seemed to be ignorant of how disruptive she was being. 

She was just one of those people who didn’t think about some things. He was of the opposite variety - he thought about everything, every variable, every possibility for something to go wrong. He probably learned that during the war. 

Sometimes he thought he might resent Iris because her life hadn’t been hard. She got to avoid the war, avoid the existential threat to her life, avoid the terrible responsibilities. 

But usually he just resented her because she was loud and brazen and annoyed him even without trying. And when she did try, she usually succeeded. 

Halfway through the day, when Draco was almost a quarter of the way through his second draught, Iris decided to break the silence again. This time to talk about her potion. 

“We should probably compare,” she said, and Draco threw a glance over at her to find that she had already turned towards him. 

“Compare?” He asked, hoping that his condescending tone would throw her off. It never had before. 

“Yeah. To make sure that we’re both doing it right.”

Draco raised his eyebrows, glancing at her cauldron. Her mixture was a pale shade of pink, the same as his, but it had a silvery sheen that meant she was a couple of steps further along than he was. 

“I don’t need your confirmation to know that I’m doing it right,” Draco replied shortly. 

Iris raised her eyebrows back, flicking her wand to gently lift her cauldron off the table. “For all I know, you’re still drunk.”

If his annoyance at her wasn't clouding his thoughts, he might have been almost impressed by her nerve. She walked across the room towards him, cauldron levitating in the air beside her, ingredients in hand. 

She set it down on his table and stepped beside him, turning to him and opening her mouth to say something. 

He must have looked as angry as he felt, though, because she shut it and turned back to her potion, making a show of checking its consistency. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing over here?” Draco finally asked. Perhaps a bit more malice than he needed, but he would rather her think he hated her than think he was warming to her. 

She turned to him. “Comparing potions. It would be easier if you would let me see yours.”

“There’s no reason for us to be comparing potions.”

“Yes, there is. It’s our job.”

“I’m better at my job when you aren’t meddling in it.”

“That’s not true.” Her hands were beginning to move as she spoke, which he knew meant she was getting more annoyed. Draco wondered if she was trying to start a fight. Or maybe _he_ was trying to start a fight. “We both did better work that week where we compared and you know it.”

“I’m not showing mine to you.”

“You’re just being stubborn now,” Iris said. She was speaking to him like he was a child, someone far intellectually inferior to her. She dropped some finely chopped mint leaves into her cauldron. “Unless you’ve fucked yours up?”

“Of course I haven’t,” he muttered. 

She raised her eyebrows, shaking her head slightly in annoyed anticipation. 

“I’ve told you I’m not going to. You’d be better off going back to your desk.” 

Iris opened and shut her mouth again. Like a fish. He could tell there was something there, though, something that she wanted to say to him but kept convincing herself not to. Probably some girlish admission of feelings. He would rather her keep that to herself. 

But, despite her silence and his unwillingness to give her a vial of his potion to compare, she didn’t move. 

She didn’t keep working either, though. And Draco couldn’t keep working when she was around, otherwise she could see his potion and compare it herself. There was no reason for him to be taking such a stand against it, other than the fact that he hated agreeing with Iris on anything. 

So they both just stood there, Draco staring determinedly at the wall, sensing Iris’s eyes darting back and forth from the desk to his face in his periphery. 

She opened her mouth again. Exhaled noisily. Closed it. 

His gaze flicked to her unbidden, the knowledge that she was just going to hover around him until she got up the nerve to say whatever she needed to say somehow annoying him more than the potential for her to say something terrible. 

He didn’t want her to have feelings for him, really. That would be more than he could deal with. Iris was the last person that Draco would want clinging to him - he didn’t want to spend any more time with her than was strictly necessary. 

But even copious amounts of denial and a seemingly limitless potential to explain away his actions couldn’t exactly convince Draco that that was true. 

He had been the one to seek her out at the Leaky last Friday. And when she had forced his way into his apartment yesterday, he hadn’t exactly ordered her out. No, he had closed the door behind her. He had kissed her first. 

Fine - he would have to grapple with that knowledge. The knowledge that, in some capacity at least, he _did_ want to spend more time with her than was necessary. 

It wasn't hard to rationalize, not really. She was a good ride, an easy ride. It made sense that he would want that from her, especially when she was putting it on offer for him. Especially when he couldn’t get it from the girl he really wanted. 

He did think about her quite a lot, though. More than the other girls he had casually slept with during recesses with Pansy. 

But that was just because he had to - they worked together. And she was maddeningly annoying. Yes. That made sense. Most of his thoughts about her were negative, anyways - or they would be. He would make sure they were. 

And she was still standing beside him, immobile, hesitating like she needed to say something - like something was on the tip of her tongue. 

He was tired of having her beside him. 

“Fuck, you’re helpless,” he sighed, injecting as much exasperation as possible into his tone. Her eyes widened slightly. Draco wondered if she was aware of how much her face gave away. “Out with it, or go on. I really don’t care either way, but you’re pissing me off just standing there.”

Iris looked slightly taken aback with how blunt he was being. She should be used to that by now. 

But she took it in stride, inhaling sharply and cocking her head, her gaze bouncing to the floor then back up to his eyes. He watched them calculating, deciding whether or not she should just say it. 

“I… was just…” she trailed off, taking another quick breath. “Well… why do we never talk about it?” Her question came out in a single exhale, as though she wanted it over with. 

“Talk about what?” Draco asked evenly, perfectly aware of what she was referring to. 

“Um… us,” Iris said, then her eyes widened again and she rushed to correct herself. “What’s going on between us, that is.”

“Is there something to talk about there?”

“Yeah,” she said. More confident now. It usually happened like this. The longer they talked, the longer they argued, the more nerve she got up. It was particularly annoying. Though Draco supposed she had been quite nervy to begin with, too. 

“What are we doing?” She asked, narrowing her eyes a little bit. Her head was still tilted, giving a strange sort of innocence to her words even though Draco knew she was referring to the fact that they had fucked three times now and not mentioned it outside of that. 

He wasn't in the mood to cut corners. 

“We’re fucking, Iris. I thought you were supposed to be smart?”

She chewed on her lip and her eyes moved from his face towards the window. He could always tell when she was thinking because she didn’t look at him. 

When her eyes returned to his, they carried a spark of the brazen confidence that he hated. She always looked like this right before they fucked, like she knew a secret about him and wasn't afraid to expose it if he didn’t give her what she wanted. 

“So we’re going to keep doing it, then?” She asked. 

Too much confidence. But Draco would be lying if he said it didn’t awaken something appallingly familiar within him. 

He would be lying if he said he didn’t like some parts of their current situation. Namely the feeling of her legs around his back. 

He had been reluctant to continue, reluctant to admit that he wanted to continue, because he didn’t want to be on equal ground with Iris. He didn’t want her to think that she had any control over him, that he felt anything real for her. 

But the way she said that, the casual earnestness in her tone… 

It made him think. 

If he could define it, if he could fix their situation to be exactly what he wanted. He could tell by her gaze that she would say yes. He could give himself all the control and she would agree. 

“If I want,” he said, testing the waters. She blinked, but the corners of her mouth turned slightly. So she did want it, then. Wanted it so bad she would let him control it. “When I want.”

“So you do. Want to.”

She was still chewing her lip slightly and it was conjuring up images of the last time he had seen her do that. His thumb on her tongue. Her eyes fluttering closed. He could have that when he needed it with no feelings involved - he would be insane to say no. Anyone could tell him that. 

“Fuck’s sake, you really are desperate for it,” he said cruelly. She raised her eyebrows, unperturbed. “Just sex. Nothing else,” he said. 

“Obviously,” she replied, her voice slightly quieter than it had been. 

He watched her face for signs that she was hurt by that, signs that she wanted more than _just sex_ , but there were none to be found. They stared at each other for a second. 

Then Draco tore his gaze back to the wall. 

“You’re really pissing me off now, go on,” he said to the clock, and after a second, she complied. Levitated her cauldron back to her desk and carried her ingredients with her. 

He wondered whether she had wanted to compare at all, or whether her coming over to him had just been a ruse to have this conversation. If it was, it wasn't very clever. But he supposed she didn’t care. 

She had her answer now. And so did he. 

He chopped up his mint leaves, pushing the bottom of his palm onto the back of the knife, slicing them apart with clean, distinct lines. 

Iris did things the Gryffindor way. 

For the first time in his life, he found himself almost thankful for it. At least he didn’t have to wonder now. He didn’t have to explain away his own thoughts. Now that Iris was part of a situation that he had clear control over, he no longer felt guilty for thinking of her. 

It would be nice, without Pansy, to have someone to call over when he needed to get some frustration out, when he was drunk on a Sunday and alone on his couch. 

She’d be easy. 

She was practically begging for it now. That made it even easier for him to explain away his thoughts about her. Pansy would never beg like that. She wouldn’t even ask. She would just know. 

Pansy would never need him to _like her_ and _want her_.

But, when he thought about it, Iris seemed like she didn’t want those things either. She had hardly objected to it just being sex - she hadn’t objected at all. 

Draco finished his brew, poured it into vials, and grabbed a vial of the regular Amortentia he had brewed that morning to compare. They were similar shades, similar consistencies. The second draught, the one he had brewed with the artifact, was slightly shinier. 

The problem with comparing batches of Amortentia, though, was not in observing color and sheen or measuring densities. It was in the smell of it. One has to compare the strength, dominance, and specific details of each smell being emitted by the potion.

Which meant that Draco had to, for a gruesome minute, unblock his nose. 

He could feel his face get hotter as soon as he cast the nonverbal _Finite_. The smells hit him at once, as they always did. Peppermint. Coffee. Pansy’s perfume.

The potion he brewed with the artifact, strangely, smelled less of Pansy and more of the other two smells. He wondered what that meant and jotted it down in impersonal terms. 

_Draught brewed with artifact dulled the smell of a person and emphasized normal smells._

As he turned to repeat the test, he caught sight of Iris. She wasn't paying any attention to him - she was leaning up against the wall by the ingredients cabinet, staring out the window. 

Normally, he would have gotten pissed off at her and told her to get back to work. But he didn’t feel like speaking to her, trying to get his voice around the Amortentia in his nose. She had a nice nose. 

He glanced out the window himself to see what she was looking at. It was raining outside, wherever their outside was. It used to rain a lot, he remembered, but it hadn’t been doing so as much since Iris had started working. 

Shaking himself out of it and forcing himself to stare at the marble floor, Draco muttered the nose-blocking charm again and exhaled as his senses went back to being dull.

Not long after that, the clock rang. He didn’t look at Iris again. Didn’t bother. 

The night air refreshed him. It was drizzling slightly on the road - a rare correlation between the London weather and the weather in the place outside the window of the Love Chamber. He used to think that the place was real, but he wasn't so sure now. 

The firewhiskey was still everywhere, and he set himself off levitating all the bottles over to a single counter, then putting them all in an Ever-Growing Trash Bag. He’d throw them out later. A quick _Tergeo_ dealt with the smears of blood on the wall and the couple of drops on the floor. 

A couple _Tergeos_ dealt with the smudges on the couch. 

He wondered if his blood had gotten onto Iris’s body, if she had to wash him off in the shower after work and try not to think about how it had gotten there. 

But she probably _did_ think about how they had gotten there. She probably liked thinking about him like that. She probably relished the attention he gave her. 

An owl at his window interrupted his thoughts. He glanced up and immediately recognized it as Pansy’s, which got his heart racing slightly. If she wanted to come over… if she could see him now… he needed that. Needed her lately. 

But the letter was too long to be a simple _I’m coming over_ message. No. It was much worse, much more complicated than that. 

_Draco,_

_As you may know, Blaise and I are off to France tomorrow to visit his family. We’ll be gone for at least a month, possibly longer. We’ll be in Paris for much of the time, and I’ll be sure to send you the address once we arrive. I’ve missed you very much these past couple of weeks and I hope you know how difficult this is for me, too. Blaise is a poor replacement. As you know, nothing can hold a torch to what exists between us. I know you’ll write. I try to ignore it sometimes, and I know that you do too, but we both know that we belong to each other. When I get home, I’ll come straight to you. I’ll see you more often. You know I am,_

_Always yours,  
Pansy_

Draco reread the letter a couple of times, running his thumb over her signature, feeling the vigor with which she had pressed her quill into the parchment. 

It was about as close to a declaration of undying love as Pansy could get. There was an apology hidden in there, too, somewhere between _I try to ignore it sometimes_ and _I’ll see you more often_. He read it again and felt an odd ache in his chest. 

A month without her. Probably more. They had gone that long before, but not because she was going to Paris with her apparently serious boyfriend. 

Fuck, he missed her. 

He sent her owl away with no response, taking the letter into his room and depositing it into the box in his bottom drawer where he kept all her letters. It was sentimental, and Draco wasn't very sentimental, but Pansy was the exception to all his rules. 

_Always yours,_ she had said, and as he lay back in his bed he felt a keen sense of sadness mixed with equal relief. 

It was strange, the simultaneous existence of bad and good within him. Happiness and sadness. The desire to ruin things and the desire for them to stay the same forever and never change. 

He closed his eyes and tried not to think about it. 

He woke up long before his blinds went up in the morning, sweat on his brow, a word trapped on his lips. 

A nightmare. 

They had been coming less often lately - he hadn’t had one in months. Maybe the thought of losing Pansy had triggered some deep survival instinct within him. Or perhaps it was just one of those nights. 

He wasn't exactly sure what it had been. Something from the war, that much was certain. Nothing else could wake him up like that, genuine fear rocking his body. 

His Mark hurt. He wondered whether he was imagining it or whether something in his subconscious mind had triggered it. Maybe Voldemort had touched it in his dream. 

It was something not many people knew, Draco thought, how much it hurt when Voldemort called them. The Mark didn’t just move, it burned. And there was no way to pull away from the flame. Having to disguise the pain as he sat with the other Death Eaters around the Manor’s dining table had probably been the beginning of his remarkable ability to hide his emotions. 

Or maybe it had just been the fitting end. 

He rolled over, shut his eyes again, and tried to return his breathing to normal. He knew he wouldn’t fall asleep, though. He never fell asleep after a nightmare like that. 

The pain in his arm began to subside. 

He wondered if it would ever go away, if it would ever be a distant memory.

But he knew that it wouldn’t. Some things come into your life and never leave, no matter how much you want them to, no matter how many years pass, no matter how much you change. They are there always, most especially when you don’t want them to be. 

But not all of those things are bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why did I genuinely forget to post this for like 6 hours SORRY hope you enjoy though!


	17. Cigarette Break

_IRIS_

It was a blisteringly hot day. The summer was winding down - it was almost the end of August now. It was funny how the hottest days of the year always came when the hottest season was supposed to be ending. 

But she supposed it made sense in a sort of terrible way. The worst things in life never let you go easily - their last breaths are their fullest. 

Not that summer was the worst thing. It was just hot and smarmy and she missed the laziness of summers back at school when she didn’t have to work or study or worry about anything. 

Speaking of work, Iris was late. She wasn't sure how she had slept through her blinds going up, but she didn’t have much time to think about it. Being late would invite petty comments from Draco, and she didn’t much feel like having to incur his stupidity first thing in the morning. 

She did a sort of half-walk, half-jog from her apartment to the phone box she used to call in, conscious of how strange she must look to the other people on the street. 

She let herself take a couple of breaths outside of the Love Chamber, composing herself slightly and muttering the nose-blocking charm as soon as she walked into the entrance hall. 

There, she took a couple more breaths, told herself she was being ridiculous and that she’d be even more late if she didn’t go in right now, and pushed open the doors. 

Her eyes immediately flicked to the gold clock on the wall, seeing how much damage she had done. Fifteen minutes late. Not terrible, but definitely not a small enough margin to avoid Draco’s snide commentary. 

She sighed, her breath coming out louder than she meant it to, and moved her gaze from the clock to her desk. Unfortunately, Draco’s eyes intercepted her. 

She let herself stare at him. He looked for all the world like a team of stylists had just descended on him - perfectly pressed suit, not a hair out of place. It was unfair, really, that people got to look like that. Especially him. 

Iris felt sweaty and inferior in comparison. Her hair was pulled up in a messy ponytail, strands hanging out and probably sticking up from the top of her head. Even in her short sleeves, she could feel the beads of sweat cooling under her arms and on the back of her neck. She was still breathing audibly. 

Draco raised his eyebrows at her. 

“What, did you run all the way here?” He asked, tone tainted with condescension. 

Iris felt a blush spread across her face that had nothing to do with the heat outside. She didn’t care what he thought, but the fact that he was so obviously disgusted with the state of her made her stomach feel funny. 

She wasn't sure what to say back to him, so instead she let him give her a disapproving glance and turn back to whatever he had been doing earlier. 

Taking the hint, Iris walked over to her station, blinking a couple times before she remembered exactly what she was supposed to be doing. 

It was Friday, a little over a week since she had gotten the nerve up to go and ask him about what exactly their situation entailed. At first, she’d been happy with the results of the conversation. Despite sounding as though he hated the idea, Draco had concurred that he wanted to keep fucking her. 

And that’s all she had wanted, genuinely. She didn’t have any feelings for him beyond her obvious attraction to him. Well, not him. She was attracted to the way he looked and the things he could do to her. She loathed his personality. 

So everything had seemed good. Sorted. 

Only, since then, he hadn’t made any mention of it at all. When he told her he would have her _when he wanted, if he wanted_ , she had assumed that the emphasis was on the _when_ , not the _if_. She assumed that it would happen more often. 

But nothing had happened since then. He wasn't as determined to ignore her, but his attention took the form of snide commentary designed to make her feel insecure or otherwise inferior. 

Nothing he could say to her would ever make her truly insecure, though. That’s how she knew she couldn’t like him, not really. You care about what the people you like say. She didn’t care about him at all. 

But she’d be lying if she said she wasn't thinking about it. Ever since she allowed herself to accept the fact that she liked having sex with him, it was harder to repress her memories of it happening. And the things she thought might happen if it happened again. 

She chewed her lip as she heated up her cauldron. She hadn’t been putting on a front when she asked him to compare - they both actually did better when they saw each other’s potions. But he was too stubborn to give in once he made a decision like that, no matter how illogical his argument was. 

Maybe he didn’t want her anymore. When had he ever wanted her, really?

When he was drunk or when he was angry at Pansy, angry at the girl who he really liked, really wanted. She bit down on her lip harder, then stopped when she remembered the feeling of his thumb in her mouth. 

There was the difference between them, the little bit of power that she knew he loved having. 

Neither of them liked each other, that much was clear. 

But Iris wanted Draco, wanted him in a way she wasn't sure he reciprocated. She watched him sometimes, the way his body moved, the clothes he wore, how his hair fell. She thought about him - his hands, his neck, the curve of his collarbone. 

When they fucked she loved looking at him. It was almost unbelievable that he was on her, with her, close to her, inside of her. 

When they fucked he stared at some tiny piece of her and probably pictured Pansy beneath him. He whispered in her ear how much he knew she wanted him, then watched her face so that he knew it was true. It was a game for him, a dynamic, and when it wasn't he just wished she was somebody else. 

It was embarrassing, the fact that she would do it again. 

Sebastian offering not to tell Tracey and Theodore was proof enough of that. He knew she would be embarrassed. He was probably embarrassed on her behalf, despite his probing questions on the matter. 

The fact that Draco was plainly an unpleasant person was even more reason to feel embarrassed. His first and only comment to her this morning had been a quip about the fact that she didn’t look very good. Making fun of her. 

No. He was a dick. A former Death Eater who had never changed most of his ways. 

Maybe she shouldn’t be with him. Maybe she wouldn’t, even if he asked. Maybe she would say no and take the power back. 

“Iris,” Draco said boredly, and she turned around. “You’re using the finely ground pepper, yeah? Not the kernels?”

“Yeah, obviously,” Iris replied.

The light from the window was reflecting off the gold clock, leaving a little circle of light on his face. He didn’t seem to notice or care. His features were relaxed but still somehow communicated an easy distaste for her. 

“You’re known to fuck things up,” he muttered as explanation for his question, then turned back around before she could answer. 

She rolled his eyes at his back, watched the light catch his hair, and turned back around. 

If he asked her she would say yes. Her thoughts from thirty seconds ago seemed stupid and optimistic in a juvenile, awkward way. What good would having power over him do if she couldn’t have him?

She couldn’t picture anyone else making her feel the way he had. Nobody else ever had. If that was embarrassing, then she would deal with that. 

She felt briefly sick that looking at him had completely redirected her mindset. At least it was further confirmation that she wasn't in it for his personality. 

Work went by fast and they didn’t speak again. As soon as the clock rang, he left, and a couple minutes after that Iris finished bottling her potion and grabbed her bag, smoothing down her hair a little bit and hoping that Tracey would let her take a shower before they went to the Leaky. 

She did. The four of them ended up at Tracey’s apartment for a couple of hours. Sebastian downed a couple of shots to get warmed up and had taken to staring at his own reflection in the windows and grinning. 

Theodore, lazing about on Tracey’s couch with a bottle of wine, was taking the piss out of him. 

Iris was nursing some pink fizzy thing that Tracey had poured out of a strange looking bottle. It tasted like sour jelly beans and she could feel it in her stomach. It wasn't heavy, though. It made her feel glittery. She had taken a shower and cast a Drying Charm on her hair to get it to fall back into place. 

Tracey was in the shower herself now, or at least in the bathroom. It had been at least twenty minutes, which usually meant the boys would be complaining by now, but they were comfortably drunk and apparently didn’t mind the hold up. 

The Leaky Cauldron was familiarly noisy and crowded. The bouncing lights still held as much appeal as they had on Iris’s first night here three months ago. They were all pink tonight, different shades. Tracey was wearing a pink dress and felt delighted. 

They squeezed into a booth and Tracey leaned on Theodore’s shoulder, grinning widely. 

“It’s fate,” she said, daring the rest of the table to disagree with her, “something incredible is going to happen to me tonight. Pink is my favorite color, you know.”

“I’d call it a coincidence,” Theodore said with a playful glint in his eye, grinning at Tracey when she took her head off his shoulder to glare at him.

After their staring match was over, Tracey turned to her favorite topic: gossip. Theodore was, as always, happy to indulge her. Iris was secretly grateful for the two of them - without their knowledge dumps every Friday night, she would be completely clueless. 

Sebastian clipped in sometimes, but, like Iris, he was mostly content to watch. 

“I heard Emily Stewart and Ernie Macmillan hooked up last week,” Theodore said, and Tracey widened her eyes and hummed. 

“That’s a long time coming,” she said, and they exchanged a meaningful look that Iris took to mean that something had happened between the aforementioned couple back at Hogwarts. 

Sebastian’s quiet chuckle beside her confirmed it, and he opened his mouth to add on himself. “I heard Emily Stewart wrote Parvati Patil saying he was the best she’d ever had,” he shared. 

“Well, she must not have had much, then,” Theodore said. 

Tracey swatted him on the arm, and he winked at her before opening his palms and cocking his head, as if to say that he was right anyways. 

Then he went ahead and said it out loud: “You know I’m right.”

Tracey tried to keep from smiling, but eventually gave in. “Maybe,” she said. Tracey saw herself as a defender of most other people’s dignity, but her penchant for gossip sometimes made that difficult. Anyone could admit that Ernie Macmillan was probably not the best ride, though. 

Her eyes widened suddenly, almost comically, and she slammed her drink down on the table with sudden realization. 

“Did I tell you!” She asked, but it was more of an exclamation than a question. “Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini are set to attend Grace Selwyn’s gala next weekend in Paris!”

Theodore raised his eyebrows, putting his own drink down too. Iris suddenly felt like she was on alert, as if Pansy’s name had summoned her to take in their every word instead of just paying passive, drunk attention to the conversation. 

“Surely not,” Theodore said back. 

“I never lie,” Tracey replied, holding up her right hand for effect. 

“Then they’re serious!”

“Apparently so. Malfoy must be off the rails about it,” she added. 

Iris felt even more jittery now. She felt herself start to blush, wary about the fact that she was lying to them, or at least lying by omission. Sebastian didn’t move a muscle, but she thought he must be staring at her, or at least thinking directly about her specific situation with Draco. 

“Why?” Theodore asked, furrowing his brows, “the two of them have been off for years. She’s been engaged, what, four times?”

“Twice,” Tracey answered flippantly, exasperated by Theodore’s lack of knowledge surrounding the drama of Pansy and Draco. “And I doubt they ever stopped fucking. They’re probably still together now - just, y’know, secretly.”

“Do you really think so? You think Draco Malfoy would take second place to his old lackey?”

Tracey shrugged. “Love makes people do crazy things,” she said quite solemnly, which made Iris smile despite everything. As tough and worldwise as Tracey was, she often behaved as if she was a character in a romcom. It was somehow incredibly endearing.

“If they’re still fucking,” Theodore allowed, “there is something much more fucked up than love keeping them together.”

Tracey turned to Iris and Sebastian’s side of the booth for the first time in a couple of minutes. Iris hoped she looked normal, not too red in the cheeks. Though, thankfully, it would be hard to tell in the low pink lights. 

“What do you say, Sebastian? Is Malfoy still fucking Pansy?” Tracey asked.

Sebastian shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you,” he said noncommittally. 

Tracey rolled her eyes. “You never contribute to our theorizing, Sebastian,” she said in the same tone one would use to scold a child, then turned back to Theodore to continue arguing with him. 

Sebastian pressed his leg against Iris, subtly asking for her attention. She glanced at him to see that his eyebrows were raised. 

‘ _Is he?’_ he mouthed. 

Was he? A week ago, Iris would’ve said no. Them being done with was the reason he had gone off on one, the reason he had gone through all the alcohol in his apartment, the reason he had fucked Iris. 

But the fact that he seemed to be sober and in control lately made Iris wonder if he was back with Pansy again. If that was the case, there was no way he would tell her. And it would explain him not trying anything with her. 

She shrugged at Sebastian, mouthing back ‘ _I don’t know.”_

Their silent conversation was interrupted by Theodore. 

“What the fuck are you two doing?” He asked, a quizzical expression on his face. Tracey turned too, raising her eyebrows slightly. 

“Just talking about you, mate,” Sebastian played it off easily, wiggling his eyebrows at Theodore. 

“Oh, right. All good things, yeah?” Theodore returned, taking a long sip of his wine. 

“Yeah,” Sebastian said. 

“Iris?” Theodore asked, shooting her a playful glance. 

Iris smiled back, playing into it. “Terrible, actually. You wouldn’t believe what he just called you.”

Theodore’s face twisted into mock outrage. “Oi, Sebastian!” He called, making Tracey shake her head fondly from beside him, shooting Iris a conspiratorial glance. 

“She’s lying, Theo!”

Theodore put his wine glass down. 

“Alright, I’m serious now,” he said - “stop calling me Theo. It’s Theo _dore_ , and I don’t know how many times it will take me saying so before you all get it through your heads!”

There were a couple seconds of silence, then everyone started laughing, Theodore shaking his head as if he wished he could’ve stayed serious for the effect. 

“Anyways,” Tracey said, steering the conversation back to the news, “Iris would know, wouldn’t you!”

“What?” Iris asked, feeling her face heat up again and her heart start to beat a little bit louder. She thought they might be done talking about Draco and Pansy and felt as if she was getting dragged back into an abyss by the ankle.

“Didn’t Malfoy call in sick on Tuesday?”

Iris chewed her bottom lip for a second, making a show of thinking about it. As if she didn’t remember exactly what had happened last Tuesday. 

“Um, yeah,” she said, trying to ignore Sebastian’s presence to her left, “but I think he was just hungover. He was drunk at work on Monday.”

Theodore crinkled up his nose, but Tracey latched onto the news with a zealous exclamation. 

“I knew it!” She said. “I heard he was wasted all week - picking up random girls every night.”

“All week?” Theodore asked, his tone almost haughty. 

“Yeah,” Tracey confirmed, “Iris said he was drunk on Monday - not sure if he fucked anybody that night, but Margaret saw him out on Tuesday and she said he took that blonde girl with the braids home.”

Now Iris’s face was heating for a different reason entirely. So he had gone out Tuesday night? After she had been with him that morning? The night that she had resolved to ask him what was happening between them, he had been at the Leaky as if she was just another girl. Fuck. She _was_ just another girl, she knew that, but it still felt strange. 

Her stomach turned slightly and the fizzy pink drink made her feel less glittery and more nauseous. 

“Abigail?” Theodore asked, narrowing his eyes. 

“Yes, can you believe it? I’m telling you, he’s depressed about Pansy,” Tracey said. 

Iris wished Sebastian didn’t know. It was embarrassing enough to be learning this information on her own. 

“No, it must be something else. Pansy and Blaise are all over each other,” Theodore said. 

“Exactly! That would be why Draco’s so depressed. Lost love. Quite sad, when you think about it.”

Iris did feel strangely sad, but not because she felt bad that Draco had lost Pansy. 

“I’m going for a ciggie,” Sebastian announced quietly from beside Iris. She immediately recognized it as an invitation and felt a stab of gratefulness along with equal unease. “Wanna come, Iris?”

“Sure,” she said. 

At least the air was not as hot at night. They stood outside the bar together near the alley, shoulder to shoulder, both their fingers wrapped around Marlboros. 

“Sorry that they’re talking about Malfoy,” Sebastian said softly. 

“That’s alright,” Iris said, staring at the ground. “They don’t know.” She wasn't sure what to say next, and sort of wanted to talk about something else, so she just threw out the first thing that came to mind. “Tracey and Theodore look quite close.”

She looked up to see Sebastian fixing her with a quizzical glare. 

“Tracey and Theodore? Is that what you think?”

Iris shrugged. “Well, they seem compatible. You know I don’t know the whole history of your friend group,” she said.

Sebastian smiled carefully. “There’s no history between them, besides a game of spin the bottle third year,” he said, cocking his head at Iris like there was still something that she didn’t quite understand. “They’d never be into each other.”

Iris knew that Sebastian was trying to speak softly to her, but she still felt an odd sense of annoyance, as if she was an outsider in their friend group. Which, of course, she was, but they normally never made her feel that way. 

It didn’t help that she was feeling very oddly about the fact that Draco had slept with someone else on Tuesday. 

“Weren’t you at Draco’s Tuesday morning?” Sebastian asked gently, though he already knew. 

Iris took a drag of her cigarette before having to publicly state the fact that she was letting a former Death Eater who she didn’t even like have his way with her. 

“Yeah,” she said. 

“And he picked up a girl that night?” 

“Guess so,” Iris shrugged, looking at her feet and taking another drag. She wondered if Sebastian would go ahead and ask why exactly Iris liked him in the first place - just to make her feel worse, more used. 

Instead, he just said, “Iris.”

Iris looked back up at him. 

“It’s fine,” she said, “it’s a casual thing, really. It’s not like I have feelings for him.” 

It was the truth, but she still felt strange saying it, as if she was trying to pretend that nothing mattered so that Sebastian would return to talking to her in his normal tone of voice. She hated to be pitied. 

Sebastian took a long drag as he took in her statement. He exhaled the smoke and smiled slightly. 

“Yeah, you’d better not. He’s a fucking dick. Obviously,” he said. Iris didn’t feel like responding, and Sebastian looked like he had more to say anyways. He took another short puff of his cigarette before adding, “but I don’t think I’ve seen Draco do something casually since the age of eleven.”

Iris wasn't exactly sure what that meant, so she shrugged and finished her cigarette. 

“I feel like a therapy dog,” Sebastian said into the night air, and Iris snorted. 

They looked at each other and smiled. Her slight annoyance passed as a breeze flew down the street. She shouldn’t have ever been annoyed in the first place. He was being a good friend. It wasn't his fault that Iris was trying to get after a former Death Eater. 

The bell over the door rang, and Theodore burst out, arms open, asking for a hit of someone’s cigarette before they burned out. Sebastian handed over the end of his, and Theodore blew smoke into his face. 

They started playfighting. Iris leaned against the wall, watching them absentmindedly. 

After a while, Tracey came out and yelled some gossip that Iris didn’t understand at Theodore. Something about two people making out on the dance floor. 

Theodore made a joke back, and Iris found herself thinking about what Sebastian had said. How he had looked at her, as if the suggestion that Theodore and Tracey were together was ludicrous. Probably because they were such good friends. 

But it seemed like something else. 

As she watched her friends scream and laugh and finish a couple more cigarettes, Iris felt more at ease and simultaneously like she was betraying them. 

She should want a guy like Sebastian, who would listen to her and make her laugh. Or a guy like Theodore, who would drink wine with her and whisper snarky jokes in her ear about the other guests at a party. 

If she was going to want anyone, Draco was the last person it should be. 

Especially because she felt the knowledge that he had hooked up with someone else heavy in her stomach. A funny feeling. 

She apparated back to Tracey’s, electing to sleep on her couch instead of making her way back to her own apartment. Sebastian and Theodore went home. 

Iris closed her eyes and thought about the last time she had laid on a couch. She banished the thought from her mind, but it came back in a more insidious form. He had done that to her, all those things, then he had gone and picked up some other girl that night. 

It shouldn’t matter to her, not at all. 

It did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (no promises but) probably a bonus chapter before monday! you can subscribe and get a notification or just check, i'll probably have it to you by saturday :)


	18. Eyes

_DRACO_

Monday morning dawned dimly. It was pouring rain. It was barely September, and the air was still hot. Hot rain was the worst weather and his head hurt. 

It had been a long weekend. It had been a long week, too. 

He must have slept with five different girls since last Friday. One on Friday, then one on Saturday, then one on Thursday night, then two the next Friday. And one on Saturday, too. Six, then. Fuck. 

The worst thing about it was that he couldn’t really think of a reason why. He hadn’t wanted to fuck them, not really. None of them were very interesting or beautiful or seductive. It had just been something to do. 

Something that would get his mind off everything else. 

_Everything else_ being the fact that Pansy was in Paris with Blaise for a month or longer, and Iris was… Iris was Iris. 

He was well aware of exactly what he had said to Iris. He had basically told her that he would keep fucking her. That was Wednesday, last Wednesday, almost two weeks ago, and he hadn’t touched her since. 

After Pansy sent him her letter, her declaration that she was _always his_ , Draco found himself feeling almost guilty about planning to keep fucking around with Iris. Pansy was right. He was hers as much as she was his, and he should probably start behaving like it. 

As much as he craved her jealousy sometimes, he cared about her in a way that he would never care about anyone else. He didn’t want to hurt her, to risk her alienating herself from him. 

And fucking Iris would definitely make her angry. 

He brushed his hair back with his fingers, sighing as he stared at the raindrops beating against his window panes. There was almost nobody on the street. He supposed everyone was apparating to work. 

It occurred to him that fucking six random girls in the same week wouldn’t exactly appeal to Pansy either. But he knew it would be better, better than having Iris. Pansy liked having control over his emotions, and he liked having control over hers. 

She wouldn’t care, not really, if he got his end away with half of London as long as she was the only girl he wanted to see at the end of it. And he didn’t care who she got engaged to as long as she said his name and nobody else’s when he was inside her. 

Even though Draco knew that he had no feelings for Iris, no emotional involvement whatsoever, it was distinctly possible that Pansy would think so. And he honestly didn’t want to have to explain Iris away to her. He didn’t want to risk the possibility that Pansy would mistake his relationship with Iris for something else and get angry. 

Deep in his mind, though, he wasn't sure that that was all that was going on. 

His life outside of Pansy hadn’t just been a series of one-night stands. While she was engaged to the Beauxbatons boy, Draco had fucked around with Astoria Greengrass for almost half a year. She was unbearable to talk to, but fun enough in bed. 

There had been a couple of other girls too, girls he had seen multiple times. 

And Pansy had never cared. 

So he wasn't quite sure why he felt so strongly that she would care about Iris. 

Either way, though, he thought it was probably a good idea to stop fucking with her. It was complicating their work relationship, which he liked better when they both comfortably disliked each other. 

It was more difficult than he imagined it being, though. He caught her looking at him sometimes with a sort of anticipation in her gaze, as if she thought he might grab her right here and fuck her like he had before. 

That flicker in her eye. 

And, truthfully, there were some days where he found it difficult to stop himself. The knowledge that he could have her, that they ostensibly had an arrangement, gnawed at his stomach when he was supposed to be working. 

He hadn’t touched her since Tuesday, almost two weeks ago now. But he remembered her the best, the best out of all the girls he had had that week. Her eyes, her hands - they were the only ones sticking in his mind. 

It was easy to explain away. Of course he’d remember her best - he had to see her every day at work, trade glances and comments with her. There was no way to forget about her, especially because she insisted on being loud and disruptive and taking his attention. 

Truthfully, though, he knew that that wasn't the whole of it. It was her eyes that were doing it, driving him crazy, provoking him with little glances and drawn-out glares. Every time she looked at him, blinked, it was as if she was reminding him that she remembered everything, she knew exactly what he had said to her. 

What had he said when she asked if he would forget her? _No_.

But that was just so she would let him keep fucking her. He hadn’t meant it. 

He hadn’t, but it was true anyways. He couldn’t forget her. 

Iris was already in the Love Chamber when he arrived, leaning over her desk with her chin resting on her hand. It was rare, her coming in before him. He wondered whether she had done it on purpose, whether she wanted him to notice something about her. 

It didn’t sound like something Iris would do, though. She was never manipulative, not really. It was as if she didn’t quite know how. She always meant exactly what she said. It made Draco feel strange sometimes. Everyone he had ever known was layered with subtext, but Iris seemed to exist in exactly the way she wanted to. 

She turned around, her eyes resting on his lazily, and stood up slightly. It was not a friendly glance. There was no reason for her to be friendly, Draco supposed, especially if she was expecting something from him that he wasn't giving her. 

“Missed me over the weekend, have you?” Draco drawled, keeping eye contact with her as he made his way over to his desk. 

They always spoke in the mornings, even if it was just a casual trade of insults. Sometimes they went the entire rest of the day without talking, so Draco always made the most of their entrances. Made sure to take in her eyes. 

“Are you drunk?” She asked. 

He set his things down on his workstation and cast a nonverbal Drying Charm on his shirt. The rain had been petulant and determined, even though he had apparated in instead of walking. 

“No,” he replied, “completely sober, actually.”

“There’s a first,” she said. 

He scoffed, breaking his eye contact with her for a second to heat up his cauldron. It was hardly a first. He hadn’t come in to work drunk since Monday two weeks ago. She was reaching for an insult and the thought cheered him greatly - he had the upper hand now. 

“What, pissed off that I’m having more fun than you are?” He asked, and her mouth closed into an indignant line. 

The satisfaction of making her angry hadn’t dulled in the three months they had worked together. If anything, it had gotten stronger. He knew her buttons now, knew exactly how to rile her up. He could do it with ease and enjoyed the knowledge that she was helpless to resist. 

“Yeah, you’re definitely having a lot of fun,” she said. Her tone was condescending, almost superior, which she didn’t often play. 

“What do you mean by that?” He asked. 

“I mean,” she replied, her eyes flicking down to his torso, “you might want to adjust your collar.”

Draco’s eyes followed hers, confused as to what exactly she was talking about. His collar was pushed to the side slightly, exposing part of his collarbone. And a couple of love bites that she definitely didn’t give him. 

It was strange. This exact thing had happened on Tuesday, too. Her noticing marks from other women. He wondered how he must look in her eyes - like he had no self-control, like he leaned into his looks too much, like he was shallow and self-serving. 

He grabbed the other side of his collar, readjusting it to cover them up.

Perhaps it was a good thing, Iris knowing about the other girls. If she knew he was fucking other people and still passing her up, she might stop giving him those looks. It would make his life much easier. 

The marks were probably from the girl he had brought home on Saturday. He usually didn’t let girls come back to his, but she had been complaining and he thought she might just leave the bar if he didn’t make a move right then. 

She had been a good enough ride, but she had gotten pissed off when he sent her home in the middle of the night. 

He hated having girls in his bed when they weren’t fucking. He wouldn’t let anyone stay the night, not ever. There was a level of intimacy there that he had never wanted with anyone. If Pansy wanted to stay with him, he supposed that he would let her. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t risk the hit to her image if cameras caught her leaving his in the morning. 

He looked back up at Iris, his hand falling from his collar back to his side. 

She looked almost bitter, her eyes slightly narrowed. But as his gaze met hers, her eyes dropped to the floor. It was unlike her, backing down. He wished she would stay angry. 

“Do you wish you had given them to me?”

Her eyes came back up to his immediately. But they didn’t show him what he wanted. She wasn't angry, wasn't annoyed at him. Her eyes were wide and he wasn't sure what was in them. 

She was blushing. Her cheeks reddened quickly, glowing in the light from the windows. It was the only thing he liked better than her anger, maybe. Her blush. Not that he liked her. Not that he thought about those things. 

His train of thought suddenly felt ridiculous. He was denying himself the things he wanted. He was provoking her, making her angry, knowing exactly what that would awaken in the two of them. Acting as if he wouldn’t want her at the end. 

She opened her mouth, getting over her surprise to speak. Her blush spread to the tip of her nose. He _would_ want her at the end of this, always did, and this time he wasn't sure if he could control it. He wasn't sure if he wanted to. 

“Of course I don’t,” she said, her voice quiet, “I’m just angry that you blow off work to…”

She couldn’t say it. He longed to make her. 

“To what?”

Her eyes were doing something that he couldn't explain. They were almost unnerving, daring him to do what he knew he wanted to do. Daring him to ruin the resistance to her that he had spent two weeks building up. 

He knew how her eyes would change if he cut the distance between them. He knew how they would change if she was the one who did it. He wondered whether she would. He knew exactly how her eyes looked when he touched her, when his fingers slipped beneath the straps of her shirt. 

She wasn't Pansy but he couldn’t get Pansy now. 

And out of all the girls he had had that week, out of all the girls he had ever had besides Pansy, Iris was the one who had satisfied him the most. She was the most persistent in his mind, her eyes haunting him, equal parts tantalizing and annoying. 

She wasn't answering his question. He filled the gap himself. 

“You’re angry that I went out last Monday,” he said.

“And Tuesday,” she said quietly, the fire in her eyes taming slightly. 

He hadn’t gone out that Tuesday, the Tuesday that she had come over. He had slept the rest of the day and nursed his headache then gone to work the next morning. He wondered why she thought he did but supposed it didn’t matter. 

She was right, regardless of the day - he was going out, he was with other girls. And she didn’t like it. 

“You’re blushing,” he said. She rolled her eyes, blinked. 

“It’s not personal, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said.

“Oh, I think it’s very much personal. Because I don’t think you would care very much if I did it right now.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? If you leave work right now to -”

But Draco cut her off. 

“I never said anything about leaving, Iris,” he said. He rarely used her name and when he did he used it as a weapon. 

She looked him dead in the eye with cold confidence. She wasn't prideful, didn’t care about taking second place. She didn’t need to be loved by him. But there was something adjacent to pride in her face - a warning that she wouldn’t continue to allow him to string her along. A warning that, if he led her on like this, she would close herself off to him for good. 

But he wasn't leading her on. Not anymore. 

“You’re not serious,” she said. Bitter. 

He moved towards her with conviction, never breaking eye contact. Her body language was wary, unsure, but her eyes told him everything he needed to know. She wanted him. She would let him. 

He stopped in front of her, too close perhaps. She had to lean her head slightly to look at him.

“Don’t fuck around, Malfoy,” she said quietly - so quietly that if there were a hundred other people in the room, he would have been the only one who could hear her. 

Nobody called him _Malfoy_ anymore, at least not to his face. Getting called by his last name was a relic from Hogwarts, back when everybody had either respected him or hated him too much to call him Draco. 

He wasn't sure why Iris had said it and didn’t like it. They took a breath, clothes almost brushing. 

“What’s my name?” He asked in a low voice, the same volume Iris had used. 

Their eyes were locked together but there seemed to be a forcefield between them, an electric fence that both of them weren’t sure how to cross. Draco knew with certainty that Iris wouldn’t be the one to touch him first. He had ignored her for two weeks, made her feel unsure.

“Malfoy,” she said. Her chest was rising and falling visibly as she breathed. He was sure as soon as he touched her neck he would feel her heart beating, loud and raucous. 

“No,” he said back, and wondered why he hadn’t crossed the line between them yet. 

His hand brushed her shirt as it moved through the air, pulling at the fabric slightly. Her eyes flicked down, staring at the spot he had touched as though it had changed somehow. 

He brought his fingers to the back of her neck, using his thumb to tilt her chin up towards him so that she would return her eyes to his face. He had broken the fence, but her hands were still at her sides, pulling her shoulders towards the ground. 

“What’s my name?” He asked again, tightening his fingers slightly. 

She knew now, knew exactly what he was trying to do. It was up to her whether to accept it. Draco’s question hung in the air. There it was. The flicker in her eyes. And he knew, too.

“Malfoy,” she said again, but her tone had changed, the edges of her voice had hardened. Her eyes were gleaming now. He almost didn’t want to move closer to her, almost didn’t want to kiss her, because he didn’t want her to close them. 

She liked to get angry with him for being stubborn, but she had an obstinate streak in her, too. 

He kissed her, felt her exhale into his mouth. He wanted to take all the air out of her throat, to watch her gasp slightly as he pulled off her. He wanted her breath to catch when he touched her and hear her make those sounds she had made the last time. 

Iris never gave him what he wanted right away. He always had to tease it out of her, slow, toeing the line between passion and anger perfectly. 

If she was Pansy, he wouldn’t need to ask. Pansy always knew what he wanted exactly and did it perfectly. But she was perfect in general, perfect for everyone. She would probably be perfect for Blaise, too. 

It was different with Iris. Draco knew with a certainty that she was only this way with him, for him, because of him. Stubborn and flighty and prone to fighting. Their tongues lashed together and finally her hands moved too, both of them to his face.

They cupped his jaw, pulled him closer to her. It was a strange feeling but he didn’t dislike it. He moved his hand from her neck, bringing it to her waist, holding her tightly. He pulled her into him, too, so that they were touching everywhere. Completely against each other. 

When they broke apart she stared at him. The light coming in from the window made one of her eyes look brighter than the other. 

“ _Finite_ ,” he whispered, putting one of his hands on his wand for half a second, taking off both of their nose-blocking charms. 

Her pupils dilated immediately and she took a shaky breath. He wondered what her Amortentia smelled like. The room was clean and bright and drawing him closer to her, imbibing her features with a sort of passion, a sort of grace. 

Her hands were still around his face, holding the curve of his jaw, her thumbs, pointing towards his ears. 

His hands went to her shirt, pawing under her collar, resting on her bear skin for a second. He would kiss her again but he wanted to watch himself take the clothes off her. The love magic of the room felt like it was pulsing in his head, in his veins. 

His heartbeat felt slower and every part of him was moving with it, watching as he pulled the shirt over her head. He couldn’t see her eyes because she was looking at the buttons on his shirt, her hands moving lightly over them, undoing them one by one. 

She smelled like vanilla, like candy, something sweet. He didn’t want to have clothes on anymore, he didn’t care about taking them off. He had denied himself this for two weeks and now it was tangible. 

She seemed small and meldable and he put his hand on his wand for the second time, muttering a spell that he used with Pansy sometimes when they hadn’t seen each other in a while and they were desperate. 

All their remaining clothes disappeared at once. 

Iris gave a small gasp of surprise. The fingers that she had been using to undo his buttons now rested on his bare chest. She stared at his collarbones, a spot on his chest. He wondered why for a second, then remembered that there were love bites there.

“I didn’t fuck anyone on Tuesday,” he said. She should know that. He didn’t know why she should but she should. 

Her breasts were like petals, the tips almost brushing his bare skin when she inhaled. Her hands were light, one cupping his jaw slightly, the other resting on his chest. She was a feather below him but he saw the gleam in her eye, the warning that she could so easily become something else. 

He wanted that fire back. It was best between them when they were both burning. He tightened his hold on her. 

“And your neck?” She asked.

“Last night,” he said. The truth. Maybe it would make her angry, angry enough to grab him, hold him, dig her nails into him. Angry enough to leave her own bruises on his neck.

“Last night,” she repeated, coldness in her tone. She straightened her back slightly. A couple strands of her hair fell over her shoulder. 

“Trying to hold off on you,” Draco said. She raised her eyebrows. He let his silence hang in the air between them for a second. Then, quietly, “do I still have to?”

She paused too. Her nipples had hardened in the slightly cool air of the room. She angled her face slightly away from the window, so that she was caught in a shadow.

She shook her head. 

He was back on her in an instant. Lips trapping hers. Hand around her neck. 

He didn’t care about foreplay, didn’t care about building anything up. Whatever was going on between them had been building up for two weeks and that was long enough. 

He wanted to be inside her. 

He lifted her up, hands steady beneath her legs, and deposited her on the tabletop before lifting her legs further to wrap around his back. She grabbed his bicep with one hand, letting the other one rest on his back. 

They made eye contact. He glared at her, a question in his eyes. Hers said _yes_.

He slammed into her.

He almost couldn’t believe she was letting him fuck her this hard. Iris’s usual moans were longer now, more drawn. She was mewling, keening, almost crying with the force of him. 

Her nails were digging into his shoulders unmercilessly, but he didn’t think she was doing it on purpose. She wasn't trying to hurt him, she was just scrambling to find purchase wherever she could. 

Draco’s hands were firm around her waist, pulling her forward and dragging her backwards with force. But Iris was moving her own body too, she hadn’t lost control yet, so he released her hip with one hand and brought his fingers to her clit. 

He wondered how much farther he could take it before she lost control completely. Before she would go limp, before she would cry, before her legs would be shaking so badly that she couldn’t stand. Before she would grab his shoulders and let him take what he wanted from her. He would find that out sometime.

As soon as he touched her clit, she whined, letting her head fall onto him as if her neck no longer had the strength to hold it up. As he rocked into her, his shoulder knocked into her cheek, her nose, and she dug her nails further into his skin. 

He thrust into her and stilled, letting himself fill her up. He heard her choke off a moan in the back of her throat, a sort of catch of breath emitting from her lips. He hated when she did that, tried to disguise the sounds she was making. 

He wanted to hear her, to know how desperate she was.

Still inside her, he returned his fingers to her clit, thumbing over it in quick, deep motions. She exhaled shakily. He did it again. She whined. 

He rocked back out of her and slammed in again, watching the table move further with the force of it. His hands were still working at her core, quick and decisive. He knew exactly what he was doing and it was obvious. 

Still wanting to see how hard he could push her, he sped up his hands and his thrusts, watching as her legs started to shake slightly despite being sat on the table. She let out a strangled, wild moan, letting his shoulder collide with her cheek then moving her mouth to suck at the skin there. 

It was a strange place to leave a mark, an unremarkable piece of skin below his shoulder, but the noise of her sucking on it drove him insane as the smell of the Amortentia continued to pervade the air around him. 

He sped up again, so impossibly fast that his own legs started shaking. He wouldn’t be able to keep the pace up for long, but it didn’t matter anymore. He was close now, so close. 

She bit down on his shoulder to keep from moaning too loudly. And that was it. Her teeth would leave marks on his skin just over where she had placed her mouth. Her nails would leave little crescents on his back, on his biceps. 

The feeling of her beneath him, her shameless confidence mixed with something softer, the way her breasts pushed against his chest every time he thrust into her, the way she squeezed around him as if she craved the force of him. 

The fact that she _did_ crave the force of him. 

All of it came together at once. 

“What’s my name?” He growled. She would say it now, say what he wanted. She was powerless to resist him when they were like this. 

He could tell she was close by the way her moans sounded increasingly like she was crying, by the way her body was beginning to shake and jump beneath him. 

When she came, her body folded and she sank her teeth deeper into the space between his shoulder and his neck. Her fingers tightened slightly around his bicep, digging further into the muscles of his back. 

“Draco,” she said, “Draco, Draco, _Draco…_ ”

She shuddered, mewled the way she always did, then stilled. 

That was enough. He thrust deep inside her and came himself, fucking into her for a couple more seconds until he was sure he was finished, staying inside her for a second longer than that. 

When he pulled out, she gave another little cry - a whine, as if she was losing something. 

Her skin was shiny with sweat and her hair hung around her shoulders in a messy crown. Tangled. He regarded her. After he finished, he usually got away from her as quickly as possible, put on his clothes, and acted as if she didn’t exist. 

This time, he allowed himself to watch her for a second. 

She had bad posture. Her breath was still shaky, and her legs were slightly shaky too. She was making no move to get off the table. She ran her hand over a bruise on her waist that his fingers must have left behind. 

Then, finally, she looked up at him. She looked surprised to see that he was watching her, and got off the table immediately and not very gracefully. 

He retrieved their clothes from where he had banished them and grabbed his shirt and trousers. He left her pants and underwear lying on the floor with her deposited shirt, then turned around to dress himself.

Iris was probably watching him, but he didn’t care. Once he was done, he strolled back over to his own workstation and got back to work. 

His coldness probably bothered her. She probably expected something to change between them now. Perhaps she thought that Draco would merge their desks, work side-by-side with her and compare their potions whenever she wished. 

He wouldn’t. Nothing would change between them now. 

Nothing except what he wanted. He had no better option than Iris now that he had lost Pansy. 

And Iris wasn't a bad option to be sure. He was sure he would think about that, think about the things she had said and done, when he got home. But Draco had always been good at compartmentalizing, and allowed his brain to shut out all thoughts of Iris as he worked. 

She was not the same. She was one of those people who are slaves to their own thoughts and ideas, powerless to stop their racing minds. She would probably think about him for the rest of the day, the rest of the week. 

Until he had her again - then she would think of that. 

It probably bothered her, how he could compartmentalize her. She seemed like the type of girl to want to be close to someone after fucking them, to have their arms around her and fall asleep. She would be like the girl on Saturday who had gotten upset when he told her to leave his apartment. 

But that didn’t matter. What Iris wanted, what Iris thought - she could deal with that by herself and she would have to. 

Draco knew what he wanted now - her. 

Well, he didn’t exactly want her. He wanted to fuck her. He wanted her body. As far as girls were concerned, though, he supposed that was the same thing. And once he wanted something, even after the war, even after his reputation and family were taken from him… 

He got it.

 _Fuck_ , her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's your extra! hope you enjoyed and see you monday :)


	19. The Alley

_IRIS_

Though much had changed over the past couple of weeks, Iris’s Friday nights remained the same. She was at Tracey’s, sitting on the ground and leaning against her couch. Across the room, Tracey played with her curls in the mirror and held up three different pairs of shoes to inspect. 

Theodore and Sebastian were going to meet them at the Leaky later. Theodore had some pureblood dinner function that he said his mother was forcing him to attend under threat of death. Sebastian was just being lazy.

Iris wasn't drunk yet, not even tipsy, but she was in one of those good moods where everything felt lighter and more relaxed. She was happy to play with the fibers of Tracey’s rug and listen to her monologue. 

“Of course, we never actually _did_ hook up,” she was saying, “but when I tell you that we locked eyes last weekend - well, you know what I’m talking about.”

“I do,” Iris said, shooting her a fond smile through the mirror. Tracey was talking about Michael Corner, her former classmate and current coworker. More specifically, she was talking about the possibility of them hooking up. 

Tracey turned around, directly facing Iris instead of the mirror. “So you think I should?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“I suppose I only have my dignity to lose,” Tracey said, then snorted at herself. “Actually, I think I might have left that in the Prefect’s Bathroom fifth year.”

Iris smiled, wondering whether or not Tracey would detail exactly what had happened then. Tracey was not an excellent storyteller - she was prone to tangents and exaggeration - but she was undeniably entertaining. 

Instead, though, Tracey sighed loudly and somewhat wistfully. “But I’m boring you,” she said. 

Iris knew Tracey didn’t actually think that she was being boring. She knew herself too well for that. Her comment was probably a crafted segue into a different topic of conversation, but Iris didn’t mind. She was happy to talk about whatever Tracey wanted to. 

“Of course you aren’t boring me,” she said with a soft smile. 

“Okay, well, sometimes I wonder,” Tracey said. “Because _you_ never hook up with anyone.”

Tracey’s words immediately conjured a cacophony of images. It made sense that Tracey and Theodore would think that she was practically celibate - of course they would. They didn’t know that she _was_ hooking up with someone. Very much so. 

Since that Monday where Draco had finally broken the ice between them, they had only made it through two full work days without fucking. He was the one who decided when and where and she hated it, but if that’s what it took to have him, she would do it. 

It seemed blasé to call what they were doing _hooking up_. It was more intense than that, more real. They said horrible things to each other and afterwards pretended that nothing had happened. Iris had learned how to go back to her work, unfeeling. 

Nothing had ever made her feel the way he did and she doubted anything ever would. When he touched her it felt like a vortex. Every part of her moved toward him instinctively, like she was getting sucked in. 

She realized that Tracey was waiting for her to say something. Her memories of Draco’s hands on her waist had left a silence in the air between them. 

Obviously taking it as Iris being offended, Tracey rushed to amend her earlier statement. “Not that I’m shaming you or anything. I mean, if you don’t want to hook up with anyone obviously you shouldn’t. I respect that!”

Iris smiled, easing Tracey out of her frantic apologies.

“No, don’t worry. Of course I want to hook up with people.”

Tracey smiled in relief. “Give me a couple of hours and I’ll think of the perfect person, promise. It’s cruelty, leaving you alone with Sebastian and Theo like that.”

“They’re not too bad,” Iris said, rising off the ground as Tracey strapped her chosen heels to her feet. 

“I love them, really,” Tracey said in a tone that warned she was about to insult them, “but they are no substitute for the real thing.”

Iris side-alonged Tracey because Tracey didn’t trust herself to apparate in heels when she had already had a shot of the glittery pink thing she had given Iris a couple weeks ago. The Leaky was quieter than it normally was on a Friday night. 

As they walked in, Tracey let out a gasp underneath her breath and squeezed Iris’s hand, which she took to mean that Michael Corner was in the room. One look at Tracey’s face confirmed it - she was staring right at him unabashedly. 

“That’s him,” she said to Iris, trying to stay quiet while also speaking over the music. 

Iris spotted an empty booth and grabbed Tracey’s hand to drag her towards it, throwing a look over her shoulder at the man in question. Michael was very tall and averagely attractive. He had a nice smile and a look about him that made Iris think he must be charismatic. 

“So, what do you think?” Tracey asked as they slid into the benches.

“I think you’re out of his league,” Iris returned truthfully. 

Tracey rolled her eyes. “I’m out of everyone’s league.” She glanced over at Michael herself. “I just have a feeling he’ll be good in bed, you know?”

“Oh?”

“Sometimes you just know.” Tracey nodded solemnly. 

Iris grinned back, raising her eyebrows suggestively. She gestured over to the dance floor, signalling to Tracey over the music that it was alright for her to leave Iris at the booth in pursuit of her chosen hook-up for the night. 

Tracey smiled gratefully and pushed out of the booth, her shoulders swaying slightly between the lights and her curls bouncing as she made her way onto the floor.

Draco was just the type of thing she would love to tell Tracey about. She would have a lot to say on the matter - questions, jokes, wild exclamations. Probably a lot of waxing on about gossip. Iris considered telling her for a second, but she didn’t think she could actually say it out loud. 

Draco wasn't the great love of her life. Iris didn’t even like him. And she wasn't sure how she could explain their dynamic to Tracey if she didn’t quite know how to explain it to herself.

It wasn't as if Tracey would disown her as a friend, but perhaps it would change things between them. And Iris liked things the way they were now.

“Well, hello,” Sebastian’s voice said, and Iris looked up to see that both he and Theodore were standing above the booth, twin grins on their faces. They were leaning on each other slightly, which meant that they were either drunk, had just gotten into a physical fight with each other, or were just feeling slightly emotional tonight. 

Iris would bet on a combination of the three. 

Sebastian stood up straight. “I’m going to dance,” he said with a wink. It was well-known code for going to the floor and chatting girls up. He had an incredibly high success rate. 

Theodore pushed him. They locked eyes and had a wordless exchange. Iris hated when they did this. It was as if they had some sort of secret plan that she wasn't in on. 

Theodore slid into the bench across from her, leaning on his elbows. 

“So,” Iris said, “I see you didn’t die of boredom at the dinner party.”

He chuckled. “It was a close call. I might have blacked out between the second and third courses, and it wasn't from the wine. I think I was so bored that my mind actually tried to escape the physical realm.”

“It can’t have been that bad.”

“You’d be surprised,” Theodore said, tapping his wand on the table to order himself a drink. Either a glass of wine or a shot of firewhiskey, depending on how connected he currently felt to his aristocratic roots. 

“Do you know what they talk about at these dinner parties?” He asked, leaning closer to Iris across the table as if she was his confidante. 

She leaned into her elbows, too, bringing her face closer to his. In on the secret. “Tell me,” she said.

“The only topic of conversation was the next dinner party,” he replied. “I swear.”

Iris shook her head in exaggerated disbelief. “Maybe you just missed the interesting part when you blacked out,” she suggested. 

He laughed again. She liked that, making him laugh. 

“Yeah, I suppose that’s when they started talking about Nathaniel Rosier having an affair with Camille Fisher.”

“You know that means absolutely nothing to me,” Iris smiled. 

“It’s a salacious piece of gossip, Iris,” he said, sounding as if he was talking about the world’s finest piece of literature, “and the only reason I even attended this dinner was to learn more about it. Suffice to say I was very disappointed.”

“I thought you went because you were under threat of death?” Iris asked. 

Theodore smiled widely. “You’ve been paying attention,” he said. For some reason, she felt her cheeks heat up. Of course she paid attention to what he said. She paid attention to what everybody said.

She looked down at the table for a second. When she looked up, he was grinning at her. Just being normal Theodore. 

“Shall we join Sebastian and Tracey?” He asked.

“At trying to hook up with someone in the bathroom?” She asked, raising her eyebrows. 

Theodore laughed again. That made three times. “You do what you want,” he said, “but I just meant dancing.”

They did dance. The Leaky Cauldron was always playing old music, nostalgic songs that Iris had loved in her Ilvermorny days. Theodore was witty and charming and she found herself thankful for his presence in her life. He was adept at taking her mind off things. 

The song changed. Iris recognized it immediately. One of those tracks that sounds like happiness, but the lyrics tell a much darker story. Iris remembered feeling very smart and sophisticated when she had figured out the true meaning of the song in her third year. 

Then, in fifth year, when she found out that the boy she had hooked up with at the Valentine’s Day Ball had just started dating another girl, she listened to the song over and over again and stared at the ceiling and cried. 

Iris had never been one to cry over boys, especially boys she hadn’t really cared about in the first place, but she was highly emotional that week and it felt very cleansing and interesting for her to be crying to a song from two years ago. 

She had listened to it so much, in fact, that Sadie, who was her roommate at the time, had politely asked her whether she might consider grieving to a different soundtrack. 

The thought made her laugh slightly. She had been so dramatic. 

Next to her, Theodore noticed her laughter and cocked his head, smiling. 

“What’s funny?” He asked, speaking over the music. 

Iris considered explaining, but she wasn't exactly sure what was so funny about the fact that she had cried to this song when she was sixteen. 

So she just smiled back at him and shook her head. 

She was drunk enough now that her feelings of relaxation from earlier had transcended into a sort of effortless joy. She felt incredibly happy to be alive and grateful that she was in her body, that she could feel the music beneath her feet and see the lights above it. 

When Theodore nudged her that he was going for a cigarette, she followed him outside even though she really had no intention of smoking. She was always more confident when she drank. She supposed everyone was. Lowered inhibitions and all that nonsense. 

They were jovial in the streetlights. Iris was doubled over laughing at some throwaway comment that Theodore had made. It was completely insignificant, but something about the way he had said it was hysterical. 

He was waving his cigarette around in the air, the smoke creating weird swirling patterns. 

“Okay, wait,” he said. “Look. I can blow a smoke ring.”

Iris laughed, long and loud. She wasn't sure whether she liked her laugh or hated it, but she couldn’t control it either way. She stared at Theodore as he brought the cigarette to his lips, resisting the urge to laugh again even though nothing funny had been said. 

The smoke exited his mouth in a weird little wisp that Iris supposed would look like a circle if she squinted and tilted her head slightly and was blind. 

She and Theodore made eye contact and both started laughing at the same time, laughing at his failure and how little it mattered. He started coughing after a couple of seconds, which only made her laugh harder. 

They went back inside after a while and were immediately greeted by the sight of Iris and Michael Corner hooking up heavily in the corner of the dance floor. 

“Michael Corner?” Theodore said, looking a bit shocked. Iris wondered again whether he and Tracey secretly had feelings for each other. Though Sebastian had made it clear enough that that was not the case. 

“You didn’t get the memo?” Iris asked. 

Theodore shook his head, a smile playing at his lips. “Apparently not,” he said. 

Iris’s eyes found Sebastian in the middle of the floor. He was dancing with his eyes closed, seemingly oblivious to the swarm of girls around him. Sebastian was funny like that - he wanted to hook up with people but often didn’t realize when other people wanted to hook up with him.

Theodore started walking back towards their abandoned booth, yawning hugely, and Iris followed absentmindedly, her eyes passively sweeping across the rest of the bar. 

But she stopped in her tracks when she saw him. 

She would know his hair anywhere. It always took on a strange color under the lights, an unnerving mix of icy blond and neon. 

Draco was sitting in the back of the bar. She wasn't sure how she had missed him, but he must have come in before she and Theodore went to have a cigarette.

He stared at her, forcing her to remember the feeling of him, the way their bodies were capable of moving together. He blinked, then she blinked. Then he nodded his head towards the door, got up, and started walking. 

Her body was on high alert, the knowledge of what was about to happen seeping through her veins, hot blood. She didn’t need to make a decision, grapple with whether or not to follow him. As soon as she saw him she knew she would. 

It was probably a bit fucked up, her devotion to him in that vein. Though devotion seemed like the wrong word, and it wasn't him she was devoted to. It was the things he could do. 

She looked towards Theodore, wondering how she could explain, but he was leaned back against the booth with his eyes slightly closed, not paying attention. Dozing off in the way he did sometimes, the way Tracey teased him mercilessly for. 

So she just left. 

As soon as she pushed open the door and felt the crisp September air wrap around her, his hand grabbed at her wrist. 

She looked towards him, but he wasn't facing her. He was walking away, dragging her behind him roughly. She followed, tripping over her feet a little bit. Her drunken happiness seemed slightly far away now. 

It wasn't that she was unhappy, exactly. Things just suddenly felt more real. 

Draco pulled her into the alley, walking down it a ways so that their view of the street was obstructed by a half-tumbled wall and a pipe system that stuck out oddly from the bricks. 

He turned to face her. A car honked its horn. 

It was cool now, cooler than it had been. It was strange how quickly the temperature dropped between August and September. 

He smoothed his hands under the straps of her dress and pushed them off her shoulders with practiced precision. The fabric peeled down her skin slightly, exposing the tops of her breasts. He liked this, taking off her clothes. He had only used his disappearing charm once.

She felt kind of strange and alive in the night air. She was taking off a boy’s clothes in an alleyway, in the cold. She could hear the sounds of the street beyond them. If someone looked, really looked, they would be able to see her head and Draco’s neck. 

She had a secret, an affair. Something to worry about and hide. She felt kind of unreal. Like her life should be documented by a photographer and put in an exhibit on humanity. 

Draco’s movements were angry. They were always angry, or at least forceful, but she hadn’t directly done anything to piss him off lately. Sometimes she did that at work, annoyed him on purpose, so that he would grab her and kiss her and make her be quiet. 

If it was up to him to decide where and when they fucked, she at least wanted some influence over his decisions. 

He kissed her. Her dress was pooling beneath her feet now. She was still wearing her heels, so she wasn't as short as she usually was. She didn’t have to lean up into his kiss as much, and her arms could rest around his shoulders languidly instead of pulling him down to her. 

His clothes were gone too, mostly. She had done some of that, he had done the rest. 

They were standing in their underwear now in an alley in the middle of the night. _Oh,_ she thought, but she wasn't sure what she was realizing. 

Draco’s mouth was angry and tasted of liquor. One of his hands grabbed at the back of her neck, fisting into her hair and pulling. She whined against his lips.

He broke away from her, pulling her hair back. She gasped at the loss of contact. For some reason, she didn’t care how she came across to him tonight. It was the alcohol, the heightened confidence. Let him watch her like it. He already knew. 

“You’re fucking him?” Draco growled. He was angry, actually angry. It took Iris a second to process exactly what he was saying, and even then she didn’t understand the context or the force behind it. 

“What?” She asked. Her voice sounded wistful.

“Nott,” Draco spat, “you’re fucking him, yeah?”

“No,” she answered instinctively, wondering what exactly she had to say to get him back on her. He was a puzzle and she hated figuring him out sometimes. His skin was still a vortex that she was getting sucked into, but now he was holding her back. 

“I think you’re lying,” he said, then scoffed. “Which is strange. Because I know how much you want this. How desperate you are.”

Something about his tone made her want to resist. Despite telling herself she didn’t care how he thought of her not two minutes ago, she now found herself caring very deeply. He was condescending. Looking down on her. She had never liked that, not from him or anyone. 

Besides, she had a strange feeling that he didn’t want her to say she was desperate. He wanted her to fight with him. That was the way to get him, it always had been. 

“I’m not desperate for you,” she said, sure that everything her body was doing was contradicting her words. His hand on her neck was physically holding her back from him.

“Oh no? So you are fucking Theodore, then?”

“Maybe I am. Do you care?”

She wanted him to contradict himself, too. She wanted him to tell her _no_ , to hear the disgust in his voice even though he had dragged her out her, even though his hands were on her, even though she knew now that he would fuck her no matter what she said. 

She expected him to deny it immediately, but instead his grip on her waist and her neck tightened. He pushed her backwards, holding her roughly against the bricks and staring her down. 

“Did you fuck him tonight?”

“Maybe I did.”

The hand on her waist flipped suddenly to grab onto the band of her underwear. He tugged them down unceremoniously, his finger moving with vicious speed to her opening. He stared at her the whole time, not letting her eyes out of his grasp. 

She knew he could feel how wet she was already, exactly how much she wanted him. If it hadn’t been clear already. 

“He must not have been very good, then,” Draco whispered, though it was more of a hiss, “you were waiting for me.”

She felt him line up with her and whimpered. He was completely naked now. She didn’t remember when he had taken off his boxers. 

“Go on, Iris,” he continued, “I want to know. I bet he was sweet, wasn't he? Gentle?”

Her mind was not equipped to think of a witty response to his words when she could feel him pressed against her, so close. It was all she could do not to squirm. 

“Why do you care what -” she managed. 

But he rocked into her, effectively cutting her off. His lips eclipsed hers at the same time, the force of his body pushing her against the bricks, her shoulders rolling back onto the rough pattern. 

She moaned against his lips. She sounded desperate and she knew it. He was so deep inside of her it felt impossible. He always felt impossible when he had her like this. 

“Because you know I’m the only one who can give you this,” he breathed, answering her half-formed question as he broke the kiss and hovered his lips millimeters from hers. 

His hand was heavy on her neck as he fucked into her. 

He pulled out of her suddenly, all the way out, and she whimpered at the loss of contact. His gaze hardened, sweeping over her naked body. She didn’t care how she looked, didn’t care what he saw. She just wanted him back inside her. 

He used the hand on her waist to pull her sharply from one side, pushing her other shoulder so that she was flipped around, staring at the wall now. He pressed her up against it again, and once again she felt him line up with her. 

The brick pressed into her stomach, her breasts. Someone yelled something unintelligible from the street and she felt the odd feeling of aliveness course through her along with lust so thick it was almost tangible. 

He could do anything to her now and she would let him. The thought should have scared her or at least made her wary, but instead all she wanted was for him to do it. 

“Who else is giving you this?” He asked from behind her, his mouth close to her ear, whispering.

They didn’t usually talk this much. He pushed her further into the wall, trying to force the answer out of her. She let herself be stubborn and feel the cool, rough brick against her skin, to feel the tip of him right against her. 

He snaked his hand between her lower stomach and the wall, his fingers reaching down to rest on her clit. He didn’t move them, but let them press lightly into her skin. A warning. 

“Go on, tell me. Tell me I’m the only one who can.”

She still didn’t answer, wondering what he would do. He pushed her further into the wall so that she was forced to rub her cheek up against it, too. He pressed his fingers further into her clit, moved his body towards her so that she could feel the entire length of him against her. 

“Tell me and I’ll give it to you.”

She whined just hearing that. She would give into him, she would, she would. She had already resisted enough and the feeling of him against her was threatening her sanity. 

“You’re the only one,” she said, and he released her slightly from the wall. Not enough that she could turn her head. 

“The only one who can do what,” he growled back. 

She whimpered again. Truly desperate now. 

“Draco, please -”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding dark and intense, quiet as it travelled through the night and into her ear. “Tell me what you’re begging for. I’m the only one who can do _what_.”

There was nothing else for her to do, nothing else for her to say. She would beg him. She had never begged him before, but it suddenly felt like she should have been doing it all along. 

“Fuck me,” she breathed into the night air, almost shocked that the words were coming out of her mouth. “What you - just - fuck me, please.”

And he had been waiting too, he had wanted her too, because he pushed into her immediately. She moaned almost theatrically, closing her eyes and letting him take her, letting her body rock back and forth obscenely, letting her torso rub against the brick with reckless abandon as he fucked into her. 

His fingers moved across her clit, building up her orgasm, and his lips were on her neck, his teeth dragging against her skin almost violently. She could feel his tongue vibrate against her skin as he trapped his own sounds of pleasure in his throat. 

He was better at it than she was, better at remaining quiet, especially because she had apparently decided that she didn’t care anymore. But she knew he liked it too and the thought made her feel powerful. 

At the last second, he pulled out of her and turned her back around, pushing her back to the bricks and pressing his chest against hers. He finished inside her with her breasts flattened against his chest. Their breathing echoed together in the air. 

He stayed inside her, listening to her whine into the air as she came, her head dipping down into the crook of his neck for balance. 

They stayed like that for a second, then his hand came up to her cheek and pushed her off him. Her head felt heavy on her shoulders. It always took her longer than it took him to recover. She was in a haze, leaning against the wall, her hands making fists in the air, while he pulled his pants and his trousers back on and buttoned his shirt quicker than she thought possible. 

He appraised her again, her naked body, her legs quivering, the sweat sticking her hair to the back of her neck despite the bite in the air. 

He took a step towards her and reached his hand up to her neck. For a ridiculous second she thought he might kiss her, but instead he pushed her jaw aside to look at her neck. She assumed his teeth must have left a mark. 

He pushed his thumb into it. Not gently. It sort of hurt and she winced. 

He scoffed. She was still completely naked.

“Good luck explaining that to your pathetic little friends,” he said, taking his thumb off the mark and releasing her head. “Cheers.”

Before she could think of anything to say to that, he apparated away with a crack. 

She pulled up her underwear, then her dress, returning the straps to her shoulders and pulling up the zipper on the side. She felt less incredible now, less alive, less like the picture of spontaneous humanity. 

She didn’t want to explain anything to her friends. So she just went home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay anyways... probably another extra chapter on wed!
> 
> also thank you so much for your comments I TREASURE them and love knowing what you guys think! <3


	20. The Lift

_DRACO_

Draco lived in an incredibly nice apartment. He supposed that was a lucky strike. When he had gotten it, he was just coming off his two years of house arrest. The wizarding world hated him as much as they did during his trials and the _Daily Prophet_ was running a campaign to get him fired from the Department of Mysteries. 

His landlord had turned a blind eye and had probably given him rent that was higher than normal. Draco didn’t care. He had enough money to spare. The courts had taken part of the Malfoy fortune, but it was large enough that the dent didn’t do much damage. 

With his father in Azkaban and his mother voluntarily confining herself to the house, Draco was the only one who was really spending it. 

Anyways. He had a nice place at the nice end of Diagon, a couple blocks down from Gringotts. Most of the other wizards who lived there were older or came from old money like he did. The apartments were spread out and nobody really seemed to care that he lived there. 

It was mostly quiet. 

But, for some reason, it was not quiet this morning. Someone was playing loud music. It was a song he had never heard before, but Draco didn’t listen to that much music. He didn’t really see the point of it. It distracted him and oftentimes annoyed him. 

This song was slow and sad. He wondered whether one of his neighbors had forgotten to set a Silencing Charm and briefly considered beating on his wall to get them to be quiet. But he couldn’t tell whether the sound was coming from the apartment next to him or the one beyond that. 

So he left his apartment early. It was the middle of September now and the air was fresher. It wasn't quite cold, but it had a sharpness to it. He breathed it in and stood on the corner outside his building. The sky was heavy with clouds and threatened rain. 

Draco decided he might as well walk to work early. 

He ended up going through Diagon, which he didn’t usually do because it was a longer route. But he had time this morning. 

He passed the Leaky Cauldron, which always looked strange in the daytime. All the lights were off and there was nobody inside except for a silhouetted figure who was sweeping. Draco wondered why they didn’t just use a Cleaning Charm, but some people preferred doing things the Muggle way. He had seen their testimonials in the papers, saying that they felt more connected to their environment when they didn’t use magic.

Draco thought that sounded absurd. 

He kept his eyes trained on the street in front of him as he passed the Leaky so that he wouldn’t accidentally glance to his left and look into the alleyway. 

It wasn't hard to remember exactly what it had looked like, though. There was a crumbling wall of bricks that matched the exterior of the bar. It didn’t serve any function and he couldn’t think of a reason why it ever would. There was odd piping, too, which was strange because he knew the Leaky ran on magic. 

And there was Iris, taller than usual in black heels, the straps of her dress falling over her skin, her chest pressed against the wall, letting him have her. 

It was odd, perhaps, the way he had behaved that night. 

He hadn’t meant to go to the Leaky. He had meant to go to the Siren, which was more high-class and had a private booth that he could recede to if he got tired of girls sitting next to him. 

It seemed like all the people in the world either hated him or wanted him to fuck them. 

He wasn't sure exactly why he had gone to the Leaky. He was walking by it and heard the bass escaping through the crack under the door and decided that he would. He might as well. 

He knew Iris would be there. She was always there on Fridays, her and her friends. 

He caught sight of her easily. She was dancing on the fringes of the floor, looking up and saying something to Theodore Nott. He couldn’t see Daley or Davis, which was strange. He wondered whether it was possible that Iris and Theodore had come alone. 

He sat down in a booth and watched Iris follow him outside. They disappeared from view for a while. When they came back, Iris was smiling and Theodore was yawning. He felt a flicker of distaste in his stomach and moved his hair slightly. 

Her eyes caught on his. 

He passed the alley and continued walking. That had been almost a week ago. They had fucked since then, at work, which he knew she felt bad about. But she always gave in to him, so it didn’t really matter how she felt. 

He wondered whether she really was with Theodore Nott. Or maybe Sebastian. He couldn’t deny the little bit of rage he had felt when he saw them leave the Leaky together, her hand reaching out to him as she tried to catch up to his long strides. 

Back in the summer, before they had ever fucked, before he had even thought about it, he had seen her and Theodore together at the Leaky. He had been angry then, too. He had dragged another girl in for a kiss, a girl he didn’t even like. Iris hadn’t noticed. 

It wasn't that he was jealous. He had never liked sharing, though. In that way, he had never outgrown his solitary childhood. Or maybe it was just about power and control and the games he always played. If she was giving it up to Theodore Nott, it meant less that Draco had her. 

And out of everyone in the world, the fact that it was Theodore Nott pissed him off. He was a cowardly, traitorous social climber. He got to live a life that Draco couldn’t, a life beyond the mark on his arm. 

But Iris wasn't with Theodore or Sebastian. If she wanted him badly enough that she was willing to let Draco control every aspect of their relationship, he didn’t think she would risk it. She knew that he could give her something that they couldn’t. 

And, deeper in his mind, he knew that if she was with Theodore or Sebastian she wouldn’t be with him at all. She liked them too much to sneak around with Draco behind their backs. She respected them. She didn’t respect Draco, but he supposed that was fine. He didn’t respect her much either. 

Was she lying to them, though? Did they know that she and him were fucking? Had she told them - had they somehow figured it out? 

He wondered what they would say if they knew. He knew that Theodore would probably be livid and the thought cheered him greatly. Not that he wanted Iris to tell them. He didn’t want anyone else besides the two of them knowing what went on between them.

He shouldn’t be thinking about Iris anyway. He should be thinking about Pansy. 

That pissed him off too, though. She had been in Paris for three weeks and wouldn’t be back until the beginning of October. Another two weeks from now. He had learned that information in the _Prophet_. Despite promising him that she would write, he hadn’t heard a word from her. 

She and Blaise seemed to be having a time of it. 

Iris got to work ten minutes after he did. She was always coming in right on time. Never early, sometimes late. He was sure it never occurred to her that coming in early was something people did. 

Over the past week, Iris had gotten more bold in forcing him to work together with her. Despite putting up a fight every time she brought it up, he had let her look at his potions sometimes. They had compared their notes on the latest assignment. 

It was better, seeing her work. Iris and Draco thought very differently from each other and while that difference mostly functioned to annoy him, it was admittedly a good thing when it came to their reports. 

They still had different work stations, though. Draco stared at the marble wall and the big gold clock. In his periphery, he could see the hearts beating away in their glass cases. Above him, portraits of lovers moved around in the confines of their frame, passionate and scorned. 

Perhaps it was ironic, but looking around the Love Chamber made Draco think that love was nothing but a human invention, a way to try to differentiate society from the hierarchy of the wild. There was nothing special about the human heart. It beat just the same as the ones in animals. 

Once he might have said he loved Pansy. Not long ago. He would still say that if she asked because he knew she wanted him to. But whatever existed between them didn’t come from his heart, it came from some terrible place in his head that wanted ownership over something. 

During the war, he had no control over his life. Now he wanted to know everything, see everything for exactly what it was, and figure out how to manipulate it. He would never lose that control again as long as he lived. He felt sick just thinking about it. 

Iris stared at the wall too, the other wall, near the ingredient shelves. She didn’t really look at the wall much, though. She was prone to staring out the window, watching the field with its wildflowers and the forest skirting it and the mountain in the background, proud and tall and capped with snow. 

The wildflowers in the field were beginning to wilt and the leaves on the forest’s trees were beginning to melt from green to yellow. 

Soon they would become brown. Their nutrients would be siphoned and they would fall off the branches and into the field below. The wind would blow them around. It would look less like an illustration from a fairytale and more like a wasteland. 

He figured Iris would still be looking out the window even then. Perhaps she saw something out there that he didn’t see. 

She was the type of person who believed in love. There was a part of her that was incredibly naive. It lived in her tone, the way she seemed to believe the best in people, and in her eyes, which were always slightly widened as if she couldn’t quite believe the world was real. 

She was sensitive - not just to her own emotions, but to other people’s. If he was around her for long enough she might figure out something about him, something real. The thought was foreboding. 

When he thought like this he had the urge to never touch her again, never get near her. He could control her now, but that might not be the case forever. If he allowed himself to think of her as something he could always have, one day he might not want to lose her. 

It was hard, though, resisting her. Especially in the Love Chamber. 

Despite his recent realization that love was a figment of humanity’s collective imagination, he couldn’t deny the strength of love magic. The smell of Amortentia still gave him a rush and made him feel impetuous. 

The room itself seemed to have changed since he started regularly fucking Iris in it. It was as if it knew that there was something between the people that worked in it now. A sort of lust, a passion that walked the line between hatred and need.

When he got close to any of the spots he had had her in, he could almost see the outline of her body in the wood or against the marble. 

Despite his nose being blocked, he smelled her sometimes. She smelled like vanilla candy. It was strangely seductive. Or perhaps that was a quality that the magic of the room had assigned to it. 

The petals that had fallen above the Amortentia fountain for as long as he had worked in the room had multiplied. In fact, if he looked up toward the ceiling, he was sure he could see little coils of vines that hadn’t been there before. 

Some time after lunch, he heard Iris’s feet on the floor and glanced towards her absentmindedly. She was walking towards the ingredient shelves, her cauldron hovering behind her. She looked back and forth between her potion and the various vials and jars, then selected a couple and walked back. 

The gold light coming from her cauldron lit up her face in a sort of artificial way. They were brewing Felix Felicis and testing it against one of their artifacts, the purple gemstone, to see what would happen when liquid luck was combined with ancient love magic. 

Iris set her potion down and turned around to face him. Her eyes widened and her eyebrows lifted when she saw he was already staring at her. It was too late to disguise his gaze, so he left it on her, but made sure to harden his eyes a bit. 

“Did we ever predict exactly how Felix would react with the gemstone?” She asked. 

“Copiously,” Draco responded. “It seems fairly obvious to me.”

She rolled her eyes, approaching his table with her eyes trained on the piece of parchment he had been writing notes on. He almost protested, but supposed that it didn’t really matter. She squinted at the paper for a couple of seconds, then looked up at him. 

“I can’t read your handwriting,” she said. 

“Fucking Americans,” he muttered, pushing off the desk and taking a couple steps closer to her as she looked back down at the paper and struggled to read it. Draco’s handwriting was perfect cursive, elegant and narrow. 

“It has nothing to do with -” Iris started, but cut herself off in surprise when she turned to see that Draco was right behind her. She startled a bit. He liked it, liked having an effect on her. Seeing how naive she would be when it came to him. 

He leaned his head down towards the paper, the front of his shoulder brushing the back of hers. He heard her inhale sharply. 

“There are three possibilities for the reaction,” he read in a low voice, “the gemstone will imbibe the potion with some sort of love magic, react negatively, or have no effect at all. Pretty basic stuff.”

Iris sidestepped away from him, trying to make it look casual and failing miserably. She wanted to have some sort of control over him - or, rather, she wanted to have some sort of control over herself. 

He wondered whether she could resist him. How far he would have to take it for her to give in. 

Usually, when he approached her, he knew she already wanted it. It was easy to tell - she would side eye him, start arguments, stare at him. 

But it would be better, much better, if he could make her want it. If he could make her go from trying to resist him to begging for him. 

Not that he would take it. They had been fucking much too much lately and he didn’t like the thought of her figuring him out. He didn’t want her to feel like she knew him. No, he wouldn’t fuck her today. 

But he could make her want him. Rearrange her emotions to fit his. 

She walked back to her desk. He followed her, grabbing his notes, and she threw a confused glance over her shoulder. 

“Did you brew this?” He asked, gesturing at the vat of Felix Felicis. 

“Obviously,” she muttered, keeping her head down. 

He rested his hand lightly on her back, towards the side of her, and felt her body still beneath him. She was always doing this, quieting under his touch. Conversely, her touch set him in motion. 

He watched her blink, still staring away from him. He had never really touched her like this before, or at least not while she had clothes on. 

She looked up at him questioningly, as if she wasn't sure how to proceed. 

“Could you move?” He asked condescendingly, playing his hand off as if it was only ever meant to push her to the side. 

She moved quickly and her cheeks turned pinkish. She wasn't sure about him, wasn't sure whether or not he wanted her right now. Good. She hadn’t figured him out yet after all. 

He peered into her cauldron, feeling the gold light reflecting on his skin. It really was a perfectly brewed vat of Felix. She had been working on it, in fits and starts, since July, a sort of side project. It usually took around six months to complete, but she knew some American way that Draco had thought would end up ruining the potion altogether. 

It hadn’t. 

“Nicely done,” he said, managing to make it sound like an insult. 

She made eye contact with him again. Her blush had deepened and her eyes were angry. He kept her eyes in his until she shook him off and went back to organizing her ingredients. 

Draco moved closer to her again, feigning further interest in the cauldron. His body brushed hers lightly - so lightly that it was really their clothes that were touching. She was stiff and distracted. 

The gold clock chimed and she jumped. Draco chuckled under his breath, loud enough for her to hear it. She sent him a resentful glare, grabbing at one of her vials to begin filling it up. His vials were already full, his station already clean. 

And he liked the way he was affecting her. So he stayed beside her, letting his arm brush hers as he reached for vials and filled them. He was technically helping her, but he was only doing it to manipulate her so he supposed it was fine. 

She seemed confused. Her movements were jerky. Her breath caught sometimes on her exhale, the same way it did when he had his hand on her neck. 

Frustrating her was a little bit frustrating. 

He looked down at her desk and, for a second, saw the outline of her body burned into it. The first time he had ever fucked her had been on this desk. The room seemed like it was eager to remind him. 

He told himself he wouldn’t have sex with her today, though. Not at work. 

They left together and nobody else was in the atrium. They had moved slowly after the clock rang - Iris confused and Draco trying to get a rise out of her - so he supposed they were the only people left in the Department. 

It was a Thursday night, and people didn’t usually stick around and chat with each other on Thursdays. 

They were alone in the lift, too. They had never been in the lift together. Iris stood two feet away from him and stared at her feet so that she wouldn’t catch their reflections in the mirrored doors. 

She had a glamour on her neck but he knew there were marks there, marks that he had given her. If she took off her shirt there would be more below her collarbone that she probably hadn’t bothered to hide. 

He supposed he should probably look away from her if he didn’t want to think about her, but he wasn't sure he wanted to stop thinking about her, not exactly. 

She clearly didn’t understand him. She was being meek now because she couldn’t tell whether or not he had wanted her earlier and she didn’t know now. It seemed silly to think that she could figure him out, one of those existential fears that could never come true. 

He told himself he wouldn’t. But when he thought about her, much of the space in his brain was taken up by the knowledge that he could have her if he wanted. She was her body, or at least she could be. She didn’t have to be her mind. 

He didn’t often make impulsive decisions. But Iris was never a choice, always a compulsion. 

They were in the lift now, not technically at work, so it didn’t matter. They were the only two people here, the only two people who would know unless she got the nerve up to tell Theodore Nott and the rest of her friends. 

Draco put his hand on his wand and muttered a nonverbal. He wasn't sure when he had learned how to cast this particular spell - it was just in his mind, like how you can sometimes remember specific words in foreign languages. 

The lift ground to a very sudden halt. His charm had worked. He took his hand off his wand. 

Iris looked startled. The lift stopping had paused her train of thought. She looked up instinctively, staring at her reflection in the doors then making eye contact with Draco’s. Then looking away. 

“What happened?” She asked. 

“The lift stopped,” Draco said patronizingly. “Happens sometimes. We’re stuck.”

Iris brow furrowed and her face screwed up. She looked annoyed, which annoyed him. She should want to be stuck in a lift with him now. 

“What, do you have plans tonight?” he asked. 

“No,” she said. “I just don’t want to spend any more time with you than necessary.”

“That’s a lie,” Draco returned immediately. The fact that she was putting on like she hated him again was pissing him off. She was probably annoyed with him, annoyed that he had been trying to work her up for the last half hour with no intention of giving in. 

But he was going to give in now and she should be thankful. 

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not in the mood for you,” she said. “How long will it take them to fix it?”

“Fix it? No time at all,” he replied, and she exhaled softly in relief. “The problem is that they probably won’t notice it. We were the last ones to leave, there’s nobody down there to complain about it. 

“Is there some sort of charm that can make it go again?”

“Not that I know of. Unless they taught you all about magic lifts at Ilvermorny.”

She rolled her eyes again, turning her body so that she was angled slightly away from him. Her eyes still found his reflection in the door, though. 

“This is why I want to get out here. You’re infuriating,” she said. 

“You’re still looking at me.”

Her gaze dropped to the floor. He grinned. He could still do it. He could prove that, despite all her airs, despite her saying that she would rather not be stuck in an enclosed space with him, she still wanted him. 

It probably wouldn’t even take that much to convince her. 

He took a step towards her and watched as her gaze flew back up to his reflection, watching him move in the mirrored doors. She was so powerless under him. Powerless to resist. 

“Could be hours, you know,” he said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

He moved so that he was standing directly beside her. Their bodies angled so that it was almost like he was behind her. He chuckled, leaning closer to her ear. 

“You’re afraid of me?” He asked. 

Her gaze snapped to him. The real version, not the mirror version. 

“No.”

“I think you are, Iris.”

She held his gaze. He raised his eyebrows. 

“Afraid of you? Don’t be-”

But he cut her off with his hand on her back. Just like earlier, but now he had every intention of following through. She stared at him and he saw a little bit of wariness in her gaze. Her eyes were usually burning right before they fucked but now they looked like the wildflowers in the field. Wilting. 

“You stop talking when I touch you,” he observed. Her cheeks got pink. It was so easy to make her blush, he knew that, but he was always sort of astounded every time he did it. 

“No, I don’t -”

It was his lips that cut her off this time. She shuddered. Kissed him back for a second. 

He pulled away. “Yes, you do.”

He went for the buttons on her shirt but her hands moved frantically towards him, pushing him away. He let her move him backwards, leaned back and regarded her with raised eyebrows. She could make the next move if she wanted. She could pretend like she didn’t want this. It would all be the same in the end. 

The air hung between them for a second, then Draco leaned back towards her. Her hands shot out again, pushing at him, pushing him away from her, but they didn’t leave his collar this time.

They stood there, her hands against his chest holding him back from her. 

Then, in one sudden motion, they moved to grasp his collar and pulled him into her. Giving in. They went for each other’s shirts, caught up in a sudden need, a new round in their perpetual game. 

He locked onto her neck, sucking new bruises into her skin. He loved the knowledge that she had to look at them whenever she was naked. When she got out of the shower and stared at her body in the mirror, she was forced to remember the feeling of his lips, his tongue, his teeth. 

She was up against the wall and he knew she was facing the doors, facing the mirror. She couldn’t pretend not to want him anymore, not when she could see her reflection - see how much exactly she loved the things he did to her. 

He pressed himself to her, his body flush with hers, and let her hands fumble with his belt buckle as he pushed her hair up slightly, finding a spot just below her ear to graze with her teeth. 

They separated for a moment as she pulled at his waistband, managing to tug his trousers off. He heard them hit the floor of the lift, the soft thump of the fabric and the metallic tang of his belt buckle. He unzipped her skirt, too, pulled it off with both hands and found himself staring at her navel for half a second.

They both moved at once then, their bodies coming back together with such force from both sides that it almost hurt. Draco hooked his hand around her lower back, lifting her body up towards him, and her hands came to the place they always did. Right around his neck. 

She moved her lips to his neck. He felt her nose brush against the skin there, below ear, above his collarbone, so light that it felt almost like a feather. Then her lips and her tongue, and she wasn't gentle anymore. He felt her exhale against him - a heavy breath, as if him holding her against the wall had stolen all the air from her lungs. 

He looked down and saw that her left hand was wrapped around the bar at the back of the lift. He could see the metal digging into her palm.

He didn’t just want it to be his chest that was against her anymore. He moved his legs so that they tangled with hers and felt her press her hips forward slightly, asking for him. Her lips were on his neck and he pushed his hips forward too, knowing she could probably feel the length of him against her even through their underwear. 

“Oh,” she whispered against the crook of his neck, so lightly that it could’ve been a breath. 

She moved her head out from his neck and rested it back against the wall of the lift, regarding him. Her eyelashes were dark and the tip of her nose was pink. 

He moved back into her and she took her arm off the bar, instead running her fingers up his arm and wrapping around his shoulder. His nose was next to hers, his face angled so that their lips were lined up. She closed her eyes. 

He felt her hand - her other hand, the one that wasn't on her shoulder - brush against his leg. Then her thumb hooked underneath the band of his boxers and pulled. Once they hit the floor he felt the air shift slightly as she took off her own underwear. 

He pressed back against her. Nothing in between them now.

He felt her inhale quickly, felt her hand on his waist, on his thigh, and when she breathed out she said: “How long?”

“All day,” he said. 

“Yeah,” she said back, breathless, “all day.”

He leaned back slightly and caught her eyes. They were wide, always wide, but they were the opposite of the way they usually were when they did this. He couldn’t see any fire in them. They had a quality to them that reminded Draco that Iris was the type of person to believe in love. It unnerved him. 

He wondered whether she thought that he was the same as her. Whether she thought that he had been toying with her not because he liked the thought of pissing her off, but because he actually _did_ want her and didn’t know what to do about it. 

Which was not the case. The only reason he was doing this now, the only reason he had stopped the lift, the only reason they were naked was because he wanted to prove to himself and Iris how much she wanted him. 

So instead of holding her against the wall and pushing into her and hearing her little whimpers in his ear, he put his hands on her shoulders, pushing them down. She looked up at him and he pushed again, harder this time. 

She stumbled a little bit, blinking quickly in surprise, but she understood what he wanted and was apparently willing to give in. She knelt down beneath him, her bare calves against the floor. On her knees. 

There was still the same strange quality in her eyes. They were even bigger when she was looking up at him. 

“I’ve never…” she started, and her gaze flicked down to the ground for a second before returning to him. He felt something rush through him. “I mean. Only a couple of times.” She was sort of whispering. She bit her bottom lip after she finished speaking, chewing on it slightly and staring up at him. 

Only a couple of times. Something in her eyes made him wonder whether she was lying, whether it was possible that she’d never done this before, not for anybody. He thought that couldn’t be true. Iris never acted like it was her first time doing anything. 

It wasn't like Draco was getting sucked off every night, either. Pansy used to do it for him back at school. She was perfect at it, obviously, but she didn’t like it and since then they’d only had time for a quick fuck. Sometimes the girls he brought home would do it of their own accord, but that was rare. Draco didn’t think he’d ever actually asked for it. He wasn't sure why not.

He had certainly never pushed a girl down to her knees in front of him. 

Iris was still staring at him, her hands lightly pressing into either side of his waist. A piece of her hair was sticking up in the back. 

“It’s not that fucking difficult,” he said. He supposed it was kind of cold. But the way she was looking at him made him wary of being warm to her, being at all gentle with her. 

She looked up at him for a second, her bottom lip still trapped against her teeth. Then she lowered her head slightly, nodding slowly. Her eyes left his and tracked down his stomach, lower, lower.

It was her tongue first, taking just the tip of him in her mouth. 

Fuck. Shit. He shouldn’t be - this shouldn’t be…

He felt like he sometimes felt in the middle of the Siren on a Saturday night, with the lights above him strobing dark purple, casting strange silver patterns on the wall. The people around him all in their own little worlds, not noticing or caring that six years ago he had been standing trial for the crimes of his family. Hating the music but loving the feeling of the bass vibrating through the floor. 

He felt like he was kind of alive. It was a stupid thought. He had been alive since he was born. 

But sometimes life serves up little moments that remind us.

If Iris hadn’t told him that she had only done this _a couple of times_ , he wouldn’t have known it. He couldn’t have known it, how could he have, when she was like this?

He felt foolish for not seeing the fire in her eyes earlier and believing that she had somehow lost the confidence that seemed to be her most pervasive trait. She hadn’t lost it, clearly, not when she was moving her mouth like that. 

His eyes flicked between her body below him and their reflection in the mirrored doors. He could see the way her hair was falling down her back in their reflection, how her loose curls tangled together and moved in little bunches. 

But he didn’t like looking at himself that much so he took his eyes away from the reflection and stared at Iris instead. 

He clenched his jaw shut as she took him deeper, flexing his hands at his sides. He couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t show her how much he liked this, how much he suddenly felt like he needed it. 

He had wanted her to suck him off to prove how much power he had over her, but it was only serving to prove the opposite. He hated the thought but loved the feeling of her lips around him, the way her tongue moved against the length of him, with sure strokes. 

He had forgotten how good this felt, or maybe it had never been this way at all. 

Pansy had always been perfect. Her movements always seemed calculated, though, so precise that Draco knew with certainty that she could do it to anybody. Draco remembered thinking that when she got engaged to the French boy, Hugo. That she probably fucked him the same way she fucked Draco, sucked him off with the same perfect movements. 

Iris was different. He knew with complete certainty that she wouldn’t be this way for anyone else. She couldn’t be. 

Every nerve in his body suddenly felt like it was pointing towards her hands, light on his hips. Then spinning to her mouth, to the way her tongue felt, to the noises she was making around him. 

He clenched his jaw tighter, but his hand moved to brace himself against the bar of the lift. The same way she had. She wasn't even looking at him - not at his face, anyways - so he supposed it didn’t matter what he looked like. He leaned away, the back of his head hitting the lift’s metal wall with a dull thunk. 

She took him deeper. He squeezed his eyes shut, his breath catching as she pulled off him slightly. Fuck. She probably heard that. He glanced down to see that her eyes were open now. She was looking up at him, big eyes, the tip of his dick still in her mouth. 

She no longer looked like a wilting flower. There was the fire, the fire he had wanted, the fire he hated. Her eyes told him that she knew, she knew she had control over him now. 

He couldn’t let that happen. 

His hand left the bar and went to her head instead, tangling in her hair, pulling it slightly at the nape. He felt her make a noise, the vibrations of it heavy on her tongue. She was still staring at him. Her pupils were huge, disguising the color of her eyes.

He pushed her - pulled her, rather - his hand tightening in her hair as he guided her head forward, forcing her to open her lips wider, take more of him. 

She did. Still looking at him. He wondered whether he would remember the way she looked now, how long it would be in his mind. Probably a very long time. 

He moved his hips against her. It was a small movement, but he probably shouldn’t, not if she hadn’t done this many times. She broke eye contact with him and he felt a strange sense of relief that she wasn't watching him anymore, that she couldn’t see how she was making him feel. 

His hand was still tight around the back of her neck. She hadn’t complained, hadn’t told him to stop. 

He rocked his hips back into her, a bigger movement this time. She took it in stride, her tongue swirling around him. And he knew Pansy would never, never let him do this. Nobody should let him do this. 

He hit the back of her throat. He felt her choke slightly, whine a little, and he stilled. There was a second of silence. Then she moved, pulling off him a little bit, moving her tongue, sucking on him like nothing had even happened in the first place. 

His jaw was clenched so hard it hurt. He could feel his hand in her hair shaking slightly, his fingers vibrating with the feeling of her. It was impossible, what she was doing - it felt like something nobody should know how to do. 

Because what was he supposed to do now? How could he convince himself he didn’t care anymore, that he didn’t want her, if he knew she could do this? 

He couldn’t. 

He grabbed at her hair more, trying to disguise the way his body was trembling slightly, like he had just lived through an electric shock. He did feel sort of shocked. Like every nerve ending was on fire, burning, buzzing. 

So he thrust back into her and pulled her towards him at the same time, hitting the back of her throat again and going further, as far as he could go. 

He stared at her. Her eyes were squeezed shut, little concentration lines decorating her eyelids. Her fingers tightened slightly on his waist. He felt her whimper, a little noise from the back of his throat. 

And then she did it. Moved her tongue. Tightened it around him, her lips too, and holy fuck he wasn't sure if… he thought he might…

It was enough. He came straight down her throat and pulled out of her.

She didn’t look at him. Her eyes flicked to the floor. Good. Fuck, good. She shouldn’t look at him right now, he needed a minute, he needed to straighten his body and fix his face and stop breathing like that. 

She wrapped her arms around her torso. Coughed quietly. Then her eyes went to his. 

He had been planning on leaving. Making the lift start moving again, pull on his clothes, walk out into the atrium without so much of a goodbye. 

Instead, he said: “Get up.”

She did. Her arms were still hugged loosely around her body, blocking part of her chest from his eyes. He moved closer to her, no more distance between them. There hadn’t been that much distance between them in the first place, but it was better like this. 

He grabbed her wrists and tugged them so that her arms fell to her sides. She looked down at her torso like she wasn't sure whether it belonged to her. When she looked back at him, he could at least recognize the emotion in her eyes. She was confused. 

He wondered whether she thought he would leave, too. She probably had. He kissed her and she tasted bitter and made a little noise against his lips. 

He pulled apart from her. 

“What are you -” she started to say, but her eyes widened when she heard the sound of her own voice and she shut her mouth at once. 

Her voice was scratchy, raw, as if she had been sick and screamed her lungs out. 

“What did you say?” He asked. 

She shook her head. Her cheeks were pink. Always, always blushing. 

“Say something,” he said, his voice quieter now, but she shook her head again, her gaze resting on his nose instead of his eyes. She didn’t want to look at him, maybe.

He brought his hand to the back of her neck for the second time now, but pulled it around to the side so that he could put his thumb on her jaw, angle it upwards so that she had no choice but to make eye contact with him. 

“Say something right now,” he said.

“I don’t know what -” she replied, cutting herself off again. 

Yes. Her voice was definitely fucked up. Raspy, hoarse. He had done that to her. It was the last straw, sort of, the last bit of resistance in him giving out. There was no way he could tell himself he didn’t want her anymore. Outside the lift or inside of it.

He kissed her again, kissed her into the back wall of the lift so that the bar was pressing against her back, so that her hair was rubbing up against the metal wall. 

He brought his fingers to her clit. As soon as they touched her skin she cried out. Even her moans sounded different now, more throaty, more raw. 

“Open your eyes,” he said, and she did. She stared at him but that wasn't what he wanted, so he turned her face towards the doors. 

She could watch herself as he got her off, watch the way she angled her head back, watch the way her eyebrows turned down, watch the way her legs started trembling. Just in case she thought she was the one who had won this argument.

“You want this,” he said, moving his fingers quicker and relishing in the whimper that escaped her lips. “You love this, look how much you love this…” 

She whimpered again. “It’s all you want anymore, yeah?”

She turned away from the reflection and stared straight at him. Her eyes were a mix now, stubborn and fiery, but the other thing was there, too. He suddenly recognized it. The same eyes Pansy gave him on those rare nights where she told him that he was the only boy she would ever love. Vulnerability. 

“Yeah,” she breathed, “yeah.”

She tried to move, to lean into him, but he pushed her, holding her away from him with a steady arm. She couldn’t really stand right. Her legs were shaking. He supposed she was getting overstimulated. His hand stayed on his shoulder, making sure that she couldn’t duck her head into him. That would just complicate things. 

Her hands moved, one of them grabbing onto the bar with white knuckles. Her own nails digging into her palm. Her other hand flexed purposelessly in the air. He could tell that she wanted to be able to touch him, to find purchase in his skin. He didn’t want to let her. 

Her eyes were confusing him and he didn’t like most of the realizations he had come to over the last fifteen minutes. 

She looked at him. “Draco,” she said. She wasn't trying to say his name, he could tell, she was just starting a sentence, but he sped up his movements so she never finished it. Her voice was still raw and he thought it might be raw for a while. She probably shouldn’t be talking. 

“Draco...” she tried again. But this time she didn’t have anything to say after his name. She was just saying it, staring at him instead of their reflections. As if to tell him that she knew, she knew it was him who had done this to her, she knew it and it was what she wanted. 

Her eyes flicked down for a second and he knew what she was looking at. He was hard again, had been. He was still holding her away from him. She was shaking. He hadn’t wanted to get close to her, but now he couldn’t think of why. 

He used his hand on her shoulder to pull her closer to him. She stumbled a little bit. His fingers stilled on her clit, then started moving again with fervor. She whined, almost falling onto his lips.

He pushed into her. She was so wet he almost wanted to feel her with his fingers, but they were busy and he didn’t want to stop fucking her. Her legs were shaking so badly that he had to bring his hand down from her shoulder and wrap it around her waist to hold her up. 

She wrapped her arms around his neck, ducking into his shoulder. He felt her forehead against him but both his hands were occupied so he couldn’t push her off him. He wasn't sure he even cared anymore. She could do what she wanted. He was going after his own high now. 

She came before him. He took his fingers off her clit but kept fucking her. She was whimpering so much that all the sounds ran together, like one single cry. Her body was shaky and a little bit limp. Her arms linked around his neck and his arm anchored on her waist were the only things keeping her upright. 

He felt it build up in him for the second time, and he thought again that this was sort of impossible. 

He came. Exhaled sort of shakily, like a huff of breath. When the air around him cleared, he pulled out of her, felt her whine a little bit the way she always did when they lost contact. 

He could usually pull himself together easily. It was always Iris who existed in that sort of haze. But now he wasn't sure. His head felt strange, his breath wasn't how it usually was. 

His arms were still around her and her arms were still around him and her face was still buried between his neck and his shoulder. 

He let himself take two breaths before he pushed her off him. She slumped over a little bit, her hands grabbing at the lift wall. 

He grabbed his trousers and boxers and pulled them on. His hands were still sort of shaky, and his body was moving strangely, like he was switching between fast motion and slow motion. He pulled on his shirt and breathed in as he buttoned it, trying to go back to normal. 

It shouldn’t be this difficult to go back to normal. It hadn’t been difficult at all before. 

He glanced over at Iris. She had managed to pull on her underwear and a bra. She was fiddling with something on her shirt. He looked away from her, but then accidentally caught her reflection in the doorway, so he looked towards the other wall. 

For a second, he wondered why the lift wasn't moving, then remembered that he had to take off the charm he had used to stop it. 

He put his hand on his wand, hoping his mind was clear enough for the nonverbal _Finite_.

It was. The lift lurched slightly, then started rising again. He heard Iris breathe in sharply. Maybe he should have waited until she was dressed. 

But by the time the doors to the atrium opened, Iris had all her clothes on. She pushed off the wall and winced. He realized he was staring at her and turned away quickly, walking out of the lift. 

He heard her behind him but didn’t look. 

Then her voice sounded. 

“Was it you who stopped it?” She said quietly, and Draco threw a glance over his shoulder that he hoped looked casual. Her hand was in her hair, trying to rearrange all the pieces that had gotten messed up. Her mascara was smudged under her eyes. 

“Of course not,” he said. “Don’t want to spend more time with you than necessary.”

“You said - you said all day you were…”

He didn’t want his words repeated back to him because he suddenly didn’t trust himself. It would’ve been better if he hadn't given in at all. 

“Yeah,” he replied, seizing the silence from her, “I wanted to fuck you. That’s all you’re good for.”

Then he turned and walked away, determined not to look back no matter what she said. But she didn’t say anything. He didn’t even hear her walking behind him anymore. 

It occurred to him how coldly he had said that, how cruel his words were. The sun was orangey as he walked onto the pavement outside. He wondered why he was so spiteful with her. He couldn’t really think of anyone else he had been outrightly mean to, not since school. 

But he did know why, when he thought about it. He did know. 

Because if he wasn't mean to her, if he didn’t consistently hate her… that would mean something else. That would mean that their relationship had somehow morphed, that part of him cared about what she thought, how she felt. Which he didn’t. 

The alternative was worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see you tomorrow <3


	21. Exploding Snap

_IRIS_

“Does your throat still hurt?” Tracey asked. 

They were strolling around Diagon Alley, cups of tea with Warming Charms on them in their hands. It was a cold day by September’s standards, but Iris had found that the weather in London was, on the whole, much colder than it had been back home. 

“A little bit,” Iris replied. 

She couldn’t exactly hide the rasp to her voice, so she had told Tracey that she had a cold. It made sense, mostly, because she hadn’t gone out with them on Friday or Saturday. 

It was Sunday now, Sunday morning. 

“You know I can always try a Throat-Soothing Charm on you,” Tracey said. “My younger brother Tommy is a healer, so I’d probably be good at it.”

Iris chuckled, unsure whether or not healing genes ran in families. “I’ll be fine, Trace,” she responded.

Tracey raised her eyebrows. “I’m beginning to think you don’t trust my healing skills.”

Iris raised her eyebrows and shrugged. Tracey shoved her, sending a couple drops of tea flying out of her cup, then apologized profusely. 

They kept walking. It was always easy with Tracey. It was rare, at least in Iris’s experience, to click with someone so quickly. The only other time that had happened was with Sadie in first year at Ilvermorny. 

She loved Sebastian and Theodore. Trusted Sebastian enough to give up the fact that she was sleeping with Draco Malfoy. Always felt at ease when she was around Theo. 

But Iris never felt like she needed to learn Tracey. It was like she knew her, had known her for years. That was rare and Iris found herself extremely grateful for it. 

Tracey had somehow organically led the conversation into talking about Michael Corner. One of her most-used skills was artfully turning any conversation towards exactly what she wanted to talk about. Iris didn’t mind, though. The things that Tracey talked about were usually entertaining.

“He’s just not that interesting,” Tracey was saying about Michael. “And I knew that, but for some reason I thought I could make him less boring.”

“Well, at least the sex is good?” Iris offered.

Tracey made an evocative scoffing noise that sounded more negative than positive. She stopped walking and took a sip of her tea, leaving Iris in slight suspense. 

“It was good the first time,” Tracey said, “but I think that’s just because I was drunk and I wanted it to be good. Like, I think my mind just told me it was good because I had been saying it would be.”

Iris hummed sympathetically and Tracey took another sip of tea before continuing. 

“I keep thinking I’ll meet someone who’ll just be like, on my level. Like we won’t even have to tell each other what to do when we’re having sex, we’ll just _know_. But I’m beginning to think that that shit doesn’t exist in real life.”

Iris probably would’ve agreed with Tracey if they had had this conversation back in June, back before anything had happened between her and Draco. But now she privately thought that such a thing _did_ exist and that she had found it. 

That was the reason they were still fucking. No matter what terrible things he said, no matter how callous she was with him, neither of them could ignore what existed between them. At least while they were fucking. The other stuff was confusing and sort of awful. 

“You have to teach boys everything,” Tracey sighed. Iris chuckled a little. “Seriously.”

“I think you should probably stop hooking up with him,” Iris mused. 

“Really? You think so?”

“Yeah, Trace. The sex is bad and you don’t like his personality.”

She snorted. “Okay, well, when you put it like that…” she said, “I mean, the sex isn’t terrible. It’s not like it hurts or anything. Mostly it’s fine.”

Iris hummed in response, her thoughts once again turning to Draco. More specifically what had happened in the lift on Thursday after work. That had to have been the best sex of her life, probably. She thought she might cry. She wasn't sad, but for a second it was like she had lost control of her eyes and they had just started filling up. 

It wasn't as if Draco had been gentle with her - the opposite, actually - but it still felt like something was different. His arm had been around her waist, he had let her head stay resting on his shoulder. 

And after he had finished, when he usually pushed her off him and went for his clothes with cold precision - he had stayed close to her for a second. And when he moved away, it was like he was caught up in the same way she was. He was slow and shaky. 

And then they had gotten out of the lift and he had turned around and told her that fucking him was the only thing that she was good for, his eyes devoid of all emotion, his posture ridge-straight. 

It was confusing to say the least. Something that she wished she could tell Tracey. Just to get her advice, her thoughts, her overexaggerated reactions. But she couldn’t. Because…

“Hello?” Tracey said, snapping Iris back into their conversation. “Sorry, am I boring you? Sebastian says I talk about Michael too much.”

“No, of course not,” Iris said. “I’m just tired.”

Tracey pouted in sympathy. “Oh, from the cold? I’m sorry. We need to find you a better reason to stay up all night, that’s what I think.” She nudged Iris in the arm. Iris smiled softly, bringing her cup to her mouth instead of forming a real answer. 

Tracey’s brow furrowed. “Are you all right? I swear you go funny whenever I mention boys.”

Iris swallowed quickly, her eyes briefly squeezing shut. “No! I mean, yeah, I’m fine.”

“Are you into girls? Because I could -”

“No, that’s not it,” Iris said, wincing as she figured that her words connotated that there actually _was_ something wrong.

“So there is something, then?” Tracey asked, clearly picking up on it. 

Iris took another sip of her tea, considering. Things really would be easier in a lot of ways if she could just tell Tracey. As much as Iris loved Sebastian, she couldn’t exactly commiserate with him about her sex life. 

Tracey’s eyes narrowed at Iris’s non-answer. She stopped walking, side-stepping to lean against the wall of some shop. Iris begrudgingly stopped too, turning to face Tracey. 

They stared at each other for a second. Tracey watched her so intently that Iris felt vaguely like she was in the Hospital Wing back at Ilvermorny trying to fake an injury to get out of Quodpot practice. 

“Iris,” she said solemnly, “whatever it is, you can tell me. I won’t say a word to anyone, not even the boys - especially not the boys.”

Iris looked down. 

“But you don’t have to tell me,” Tracey added quickly. 

Iris looked back up. The corners of Tracey’s mouth turned up slightly. 

“But I’d really rather you did,” she said conspiratorially, “I’m intrigued now.”

“Yeah, I…” Iris trailed off. She wanted to tell her, really. She had been wanting to tell her since they had first fucked. But she wasn't sure she could find the words. “I don’t know how to…”

“Is it easier if I guess?” Tracey asked.

Iris nodded, immensely thankful for Tracey’s intuition.

“Right. So, you aren’t into girls. But you don’t want me to hook you up with anyone. But you’re not against having sex.” Tracey chewed on the words as they exited her mouth, looking up at the sky like she was solving a grand philosophical puzzle. 

She snapped her head down suddenly. “Because you’re already hooking up with someone, aren’t you!”

Iris couldn’t help but smile. She nodded smally. 

“Right,” Tracey said, pointing a finger at Iris, “is this some American bloke, or do I know him?”

“No, he’s - you know him.”

“Oh, joy,” she said sarcastically. “All the boys I know are a bit shit, really. I guess I shouldn’t say that, though, if you’re seeing one of them.” Her eyes widened suddenly. “Shit, I hope I haven’t hooked up with him before. That would be a little strange.”

“No chance of that,” Iris said. 

“Really!” Tracey exclaimed. “That’s interesting. Narrows the field quite a bit. So… would he come out? Like, would we see him at the Leaky ever?”

Iris shrugged. “Yeah, sometimes.”

Tracey screwed up her face. “Surely not Ernie Macmillan?”

Iris made a face and Tracey snorted. 

“Okay, yeah, that was an offensive question,” she said. “Is he attractive?”

“Um… yeah.”

Still leaning against the building, Tracey drummed her fingers against the brick. Iris watched her thinking. She hoped that Tracey wouldn’t be able to guess it and at the same time hoped she would. She needed someone to talk to, but she wasn't sure she actually wanted to talk to anybody about Draco - parts of it were embarrassing. Most of it was embarrassing. Fuck, the whole thing was embarrassing. 

“Does he work at the Ministry?”

“Yeah.”

“In the Department?”

Iris’s heart was racing slightly. It was quite a secret, really. Kept for months. She nodded.

Tracey went back to thinking for a couple of seconds, then laughed lightly to herself.

“What?” Iris asked. 

Tracey looked towards her with amusement on her face. “I was about to ask if it was Malfoy. Could you imagine?”

But a second after she said the words, her face melted into disbelief and she pushed off the wall. Her eyes narrowed, staring at Iris, who had never been good at disguising the truth. She was sure the fact that she was sleeping with Draco was written all over her face. 

“You’re kidding,” Tracey said, her voice coming out almost in a whisper, “you’re fucking joking me.”

Iris shook her head slightly, not sure if she could bring herself to say out loud that it was the truth. 

“But you hate him! He hates you! You - you hate each other!” If she was whispering before, now she was yelling. She didn’t look angry, though - just intrigued. Iris felt relief wash over her in a quick rush. 

“Yeah… we do.”

Tracey leaned back against the wall, surveying Iris with a shocked smile on her face. “You little slag,” she teased, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this earlier!”

“Yeah, well. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

Tracey snorted again. “Oh, no, it’s definitely not. We’ve all seen him.” She gave it a second before asking what she really wanted to know, which was: “is he good in bed?”

“Um…”

Thankfully, though, Tracey cut her off. “Well, I guess he has to be, if it’s not his personality that’s doing it for you.” She shook her head to herself in disbelief. “Holy shit. I mean, holy shit! I can’t believe this.” She pointed at Iris almost accusingly, but the smile was still growing on her face. “You know, I’m actually jealous of you. I had a dream I fucked Malfoy last year. Sebastian wouldn’t let me hear the end of it, and that was just a dream! Wait until the boys figure out - unless you don’t want them to know.”

Iris winced slightly. “Sebastian… already knows.”

Tracey’s jaw dropped again. “So I’m not even the first to know! Iris, I could be pissed off at you.”

“What if I let you tell Theodore?” Iris asked. 

“Alright, I forgive you. He’s going to climb up the wall, he hates Malfoy.”

“Well,” Iris said, “so do I.”

They ended up at Sebastian’s apartment that night under the pretense of having an Exploding Snap tournament. Everyone seemed jovial - Sebastian and Theodore were lazily happy, Tracey was buzzing about being able to tell Theodore about Malfoy, and Iris was relieved that she still had friends. 

They had takeout for dinner - Sebastian was a terrible cook and Tracey didn’t feel like it. After they finished up, Theodore went to set up the table and Tracey followed him, leaving Sebastian and Iris to do the dishes. 

Most people hated doing dishes. Iris didn’t exactly like it, but she didn’t mind it either. She liked the feeling of the soap and warm water on her hands. Sebastian just set a charm to do it for him and sat back. 

“I told Tracey,” Iris said. 

Sebastian looked momentarily confused, then raised his eyebrows. “And what did she say?”

“She said she had a sex dream about Malfoy last year.”

Sebastian chuckled. “Holy shit, I’d forgotten. Was she angry at all?”

Iris shook her head. “Angry that she wasn't the first to know, maybe. But I told her she could be the one to tell Theodore.”

Sebastian narrowed his eyes slightly. “She’s going to tell Theodore?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I dunno. I just… I’m not sure that’s the right idea.”

Iris turned around, holding a dripping dish over the sink to face him. “Why? You think he’ll be angry that it’s Draco?” She supposed that made sense. Draco was more of a dick to Theodore in school than most anyone else. 

“Not that…” Sebastian trailed off. He couldn’t seem to find what he was saying, though. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine.”

“Do you think I should be the one to tell him?” Iris asked. 

Sebastian shook his head again. “Forget I said anything.”

They finished the dishes and returned to the living room, where Theodore was finishing dividing out the cards and Tracey was lounging around eating chocolate frogs. She wiggled her eyebrows at Iris. 

Iris felt a strange sense of unease. Sebastian sometimes set her off like this, what with his musings and confusingly vague statements. She tried to shake it off as she sat down. 

“Okay, first round,” Tracey said, swinging her legs back onto the floor. “Theodore vs. Iris.”

“I have this one in the bag,” Theodore said. Iris flipped him off but didn’t refute it - she had never played Exploding Snap before, and Theodore was apparently the best player out of the three of them. 

She yelped slightly the first time the cards exploded, which set Sebastian and Tracey howling with laughter. Theodore started trying to recreate her little scream, making his voice incredibly high-pitched, and Iris tried her best to remain serious as she lost six consecutive hands. 

Up next was Tracey and Sebastian, which was hotly contested. Tracey ended up pulling it out in the end, winning by one hand and rewarding herself with another chocolate frog. 

Iris lay back on the couch and Sebastian lazed on the floor as Tracey and Theodore teed up to play the championship round. The air was full of laughter and trash talk and the sun was going down outside the window, painting the room with gold light. 

Iris went and sat next to Sebastian on the floor so he could explain what was going on. Tracey and Theodore were pretty evenly matched, it seemed, or at least Theodore was playing down to her level so that his win would be more dramatic. 

Sebastian walked around both sides of the table during their final hand, returning to the rug to whisper to Iris that Theodore’s cards were better and that he would probably win. 

The round started, and their hands moved in a sort of flurry, throwing down cards and picking up new ones. Theodore got rid of all his cards but one, then Tracey ran out of cards to put down too. They stared at each other for a second. 

“He’s about to put it down for the win,” Sebastian whispered. 

Tracey narrowed her eyes. 

Theodore’s hand moved the slightest bit. 

“Iris is fucking Draco Malfoy,” Tracey called out. Theodore’s head snapped up in surprise, his hand dipping down and knocking the pile of cards over, which promptly exploded in his face in a puff of pink smoke. 

Tracey was cackling, and Iris heard Sebastian chuckling beside her. It really was quite the image. Theodore’s hair was standing up with little bits of pink chalk dust in it. His jaw was dropped, his brows furrowed. 

“You’re playing dirty, lying to my face like that,” he said. 

“I’m not lying,” Tracey held up her hands, shooting Iris a grin. 

Theodore furrowed his brows even more. “Iris,” he said, “you’re not going to let her get away with spreading rumors about you!” His tone was playful, but there was an edge to his voice. Maybe. Or maybe Iris was just hearing things because Sebastian had freaked her out earlier. 

“It’s true,” she said softly, and his brows furrowed again. He turned back to the game, throwing down his last card. 

The cards exploded again, this time with a puff of green. Tracey was beside herself, her body sinking to the floor with laughter, the chocolate frog she was about to eat escaping from her loose fingers and scuttling away towards the kitchen. 

Sebastian was laughing more quietly. He was drunk. 

Iris was smiling slightly, but she felt strange inside. Theodore wasn't laughing at all. 

“Am I the last to know?” He asked. 

“Don’t be pissed,” Tracey said, propping herself up on the couch, “she only told me about it this morning.”

Iris was only there for a couple more hours. Everyone seemed to be acting normal except her and Theodore. All his jokes were a little bit darker and she found it harder than usual to differentiate between his sarcasm and his real thoughts. 

Nobody else seemed to notice, though, including Sebastian, who had been the one to warn her in the first place. Maybe Tracey was right and he was just angry that he was the last to know a piece of gossip. He was always that way. 

Monday morning dawned early and Iris got to work at the same time as Tracey, which meant they got to share a rare lift together. Iris felt jittery and strange in the lift now, though. It was like everywhere she looked was a reminder of what had happened in here not four days ago. 

Draco must have gotten the other lift right before them, because he was walking just ahead of them through the Department of Mysteries’s atrium. 

“Good weekend, Malfoy?” Tracey called out. Iris blushed on her behalf, unsure what to do when Draco turned around to glare at Tracey before fixing his glare on Iris herself. 

He turned around and Tracey raised her eyebrows, nudging Iris and turning to whisper to her. “Well, the sex must be good, then, if you two are carrying on like that.”

Iris rolled her eyes. “See you later, Trace.”

“Hate sex!” Tracey whispered, holding onto her arm to make sure she got her last point in. “God, I really am jealous. See you after.”

She let go of Iris, who stood outside the doors to the Love Chamber for a second before sighing and tapping the handle with her wand. It clicked open. She muttered the nose-blocking charm in the entrance hall, then pushed open the double doors that led into the room itself. 

It was sunny outside the window. She had seen Draco since they fucked in the lift - they had worked together all day Friday - but they hadn’t really interacted much. Now, after telling Tracey about him, it was clear in her mind how much she wanted him. 

His hair stood out in the sun. Depending on the light, it could look silver or gold or some strange shade of neon. His fingers were drumming on the table. He hadn’t taken off his rings yet. His gaze was set on a piece of parchment in front of him. Notes they had taken. She wasn't convinced anyone could read his handwriting, including himself.

She was struck suddenly with the knowledge that she would probably let him do most anything to her. He could say anything to her and she would still let him fuck her whenever he wanted. He _had_ said terrible things to her and she still found herself wanting him badly. 

Perhaps it was weak and wrong. She should probably love herself more, respect herself more than that. 

But she came back to Sunday morning, walking through the streets with Tracey, their hands wrapped around paper cups. _I’m beginning to think that shit doesn’t exist in real life_ , Tracey had said, meaning that she didn’t think two people could ever just read each other’s mind when they were fucking. 

Iris never felt like she could read Draco’s mind, but she could tell he liked the things she did. She sometimes thought he could read her mind, though. Little things he did, the way his hands gripped her. She thought he might. 

She hated him, but could she really hate him? Can you really hate someone if they’re all you want?

She hated the way he spoke to her, how angry he got at the drop of a hat. She hated the way he made her weak, powerless to resist him. She hated the way her self-respect seemed to dissipate when she was around him. 

How could she think that she would let him do anything to her? 

That was fucked up. Wrong. She shouldn’t be thinking things that like. She should be refusing him. But she wasn't.

So maybe it wasn't Draco who she hated. Maybe it was just herself. 

“What are you standing there for?” He asked. “We have work to do.”

She latched onto little things he did sometimes as proof that she had the same effect on him. He said _we_ have work to do, as if he was finally coming around to the fact that they were partners. As if he was going to let her in. 

And there were other things, too, things that weren’t little. Things he had said to her while they were fucking. The way she heard his breath catch sometimes when he couldn’t stop it. Most of the things he had said to her and done to her when they were in the lift on Thursday.

She couldn’t help but think there was something else behind his words, some reason for him to say _that’s all you’re good for_ besides simply believing it. 

It seemed to Iris that maybe Draco didn’t hate her, either. Maybe he hated himself for letting her make him feel the way she did. And he was confusing it. Or taking it out on her. Or both. 

But that was wishful thinking. In truth, he probably did mean exactly what he had said. He probably didn’t think she was good for much else. Why would he?

It was a quiet day. It started raining outside the window around lunch. They couldn’t hear it through the glass, but Iris saw it weighing the yellowing leaves down and beading on the grass. 

The gold clock chimed and she started cleaning up. She noticed Draco was still in the room, felt his presence like a shadow that didn’t belong to her was following her around. She wished she could be absentminded, casual in her notation of his movements, but she had been noticing everything about him for a very long time. 

They ended up in the lift together. The second time ever, the second time in four days. She kept her gaze on the floor but thought he might be watching her reflection in her periphery. 

She felt sort of bold in a shy way. She wondered whether they would do it again. It was good here the last time. He had been the one to stop the lift, Iris was sure, even though he hadn’t admitted it. The fact that he had stopped it in the first place was a sort of admittance of something else. 

“Are you going to stop it again?” She asked, keeping her eyes on the floor

“Do you want me to?” She heard his voice say.

“No. Fucking annoying the first time.” Usually when she said shit like that, shit about not liking him or wanting him or finding him annoying, he called her out on it. _That’s a lie_ , he would say, or something of the like. 

He didn’t call her out this time. She supposed they both knew that she was lying so he didn’t have to say it. Last time they were in here she thought she might just keep her arms around him, even when they were done, duck her head into his neck and breathe him in. 

“You didn’t seem very annoyed,” he said after a while. The lift was almost at the lobby level. Iris felt like she was on a deadline to do something that she both needed and didn’t want to need. 

“I was,” she said, thinking about the way he had made her stare at their reflections. He had whispered things in her ear about what her face looked like, but she hadn’t been staring at her face at all. She had been looking at the side of his nose in the doorway, the back of his head, the way his jaw was shaped. 

“You weren’t,” he said. “You were on your knees for me.” It was a callous thing to say but it was true. The way he said it was strange. He wasn't condescending like usual. He was being kind of quiet. “I bet you’d do it again if I asked. I bet you’d do whatever I wanted you to.”

That was true too. It was less of a command and more of a question, almost. Like he wanted her to answer him and say yes or say no, tell the truth or lie again. 

“I wouldn’t,” she said, because the alternative was admitting that she would. 

“You would. You have plans tonight?”

No. She was supposed to see Tracey for a second, but that wasn't a real plan. She shrugged. She didn’t want to tell him that she didn’t because he would call her eager, but she wanted him to know that she didn’t. That he could ask her… whatever. Whatever he was going to ask her. And he was right - she would probably say yes. 

“You don’t,” he said. He was telling her a lot about herself tonight. But using a different tone than he normally did, so it felt different. The lift lurched to a stop and moved forward. 

“You can’t tell me whether or not I have plans tonight,” Iris said. The doors to the lift opened and she looked at him, made eye contact with him for the first time since they had gotten in the lift. 

His face gave nothing away, which was unsurprising. 

“I am,” he said, “and you’ll listen.”

They stepped out of the lift and she stood there stupidly. She didn’t have to say a word for him to know that it was true. She would listen. 

He started walking, throwing a look over his shoulders that told her to follow. They stepped outside of the Ministry building. The sun was setting earlier now, but it hadn’t quite started yet. He grabbed her wrist without looking at her. 

“Tell me no,” he said. It sort of seemed like he really did want her to tell him no. 

But she didn’t. 

She felt her body twist through the air, like all her limbs were pieces of parchment getting balled up to throw out. His fingers were tight around her. Iris sort of hated apparating, especially as a side-along. 

They ended up on a sidewalk. The sun had begun to dip below the horizon. Draco started walking immediately. He had always been quicker at recovering than she was. She shook her head slightly and swallowed her nausea, her brain focusing in on his hand around her wrist as he dragged her behind him. 

She looked up, recognizing her surroundings enough to know that they were on the North end of Diagon, near Gringotts and the shop where Tracey had gotten that dark green dress that she was always bragging about. 

Iris wondered where they were going. Maybe a bar, some nice place she had never been to. But she couldn’t exactly imagine Draco taking her to a bar on a Monday night. 

But they were only walking for thirty seconds before Draco stopped, turning towards the door to a building that Iris recognized immediately. She wasn't sure how she didn’t see it earlier. She had been here before, to this building. 

She had searched up its address in the Ministry directory, let the woman at the front desk buzz her up. She had ridden the golden lift to Draco’s floor, gotten off, and walked down the hallway to his door, his apartment. She had felt confident and superior, about to prove a point to him. About to prove herself worthy of the job he didn’t think he deserved. 

But she had knocked and he had opened the door with a towel around his waist and a Pansy Parkinson standing over his shoulder with expensive heels dangling languidly from her hand. 

And she had been here a second time, angry at him, ready to yell at him and force her way into his apartment. And she had ended up on the couch below him, surrounded by lust and firewhiskey bottles. 

They were at Draco’s building. 

He didn’t look back at her as they walked inside, didn’t so much as throw a glance behind him to the older witch who worked at the reception desk. 

They stepped into the lift, the second lift they had been in together today. It felt like an hour since either of them had said a word to each other, but it was probably closer to two minutes. 

Draco kept his hand around her wrist. It didn’t feel intimate, didn’t feel romantic - no, it just felt like he was trying to prove a point. Like he was trying to possess her. Fine. He could possess her if that’s what he wanted. If that’s what it took for him to bring her home. 

The lift stopped seamlessly on the second-to-top floor, the doors opening with a satisfying ding to reveal his hallway. There were columns on the sides, which struck Iris as indulgent. The floor was hard tile and their shoes clicked across it as they walked down it, Draco’s hand still on her. 

It didn’t escape Iris as they walked that he didn’t have to bring her here. There was no reason for him to. He could’ve easily had her back at work or in the lift. Fuck, he could have pulled her onto a backstreet. She would’ve let him do any of those things and he knew it. 

But he had brought her back to his apartment instead. 

He put his hand on the door and it unlocked immediately, his wards recognizing him. 

His apartment was clean and imposing. Without the empty bottles resting on every available surface, the space looked almost like one of those showrooms. An apartment that nobody lived in. He didn’t have art or interesting furniture or little things on the tabletops.

She didn’t have much time to look, though, because he kept his hand on her wrist and kept walking, past the living room and the kitchen and into a little hallway. He swung open the door at the end of the hall. 

There was a window facing the street. The sun was really setting now, casting its rays over Draco’s bed, the mirror in the corner, his bedside table. The light was almost eerily orange. It made the room look hotter, like they were in the desert, but it made his eyes look colder somehow. 

The door swung shut behind him and his hands were on her. She kissed him immediately, like she was breathing a sigh of relief. She had wanted him all day and before that. She had wanted him since Thursday night. 

He wasn't a secret anymore and despite the little bit of weirdness with Theo nothing bad had happened. It made her feel less guilty when she touched him, when she unbuttoned his shirt while he pushed her skirt down her legs. There was no shame anymore, just the feeling of her palm smoothing up his bare chest. 

The orange light caught his eyelashes, tinting them. He looked unreal, really, like an alien. Iris didn’t understand how he could look this way. He was from a different planet, somewhere very far from the sun. He was built just for her, just for her to look at and touch and think about. 

He pushed her onto his bed, kind of threw her. The light was crazy, shining right in her eyes, so she closed them until he moved over her and his body blocked the sun from her face. Then she opened them and watched him.

He didn’t turn her over when he fucked her, or look at a little spot on her stomach. He watched her face and didn’t say anything, the whole time, nothing. Iris had the feeling that something had changed irrevocably between them and she wasn't sure why or how. 

He held her very close to him so that she could feel his whole body on hers and his lips were right next to her ear. She kissed him sometimes or stared at his ceiling. 

Eventually the sun dulled, the light changing from deep orange to a sort of dark gold. Draco was moving slower than he usually did. 

She felt different about him. Maybe it was that her friends knew about him now and didn’t care. Or maybe because she had finally fully come to the realization that she would probably never be able to have sex like this with anyone else. 

Maybe she just looked at him and knew. The fading light framed his body. His eyes were a mosaic of light and dark. The Mark on his arm stood out against his pale skin. Dormant but menacing. Reminding her of all the terrible things he had done. 

He said something right before she came. The first thing he had said to her since they were back at the Ministry.

“This is what you want.” It was exactly the type of thing he always said, a reminder to her that she wanted it, that he could control her. But his voice went up slightly at the end so that it sounded sort of like a question, like he was asking her. She wondered whether he had meant it like that. 

Either way, whether it was a question or a command, she nodded. And closed her eyes and nodded again, one more time. 

His rings were cold against her skin. She felt his hair on her cheek and his breath on her neck, a long exhale. He rested on her before she pulled out. Not for very long, but he still did. 

He rolled off her and they lay in his bed together on top of the blankets. There was no way he could hate her. The sun had gone down now. All its light had been drained and the city was black behind Draco’s window. 

“You should go,” he said. 

Iris knew he wouldn’t let her stay. She had never thought he would.

She apparated back to her building. The lifts were broken still, always broken. A pixie infestation from two years ago. She walked up the stairs and her legs hurt. 

It was all she wanted but it made her feel like this when it was over. Like a shadow drifting around the halls of her apartment. She wondered how much longer she could do it for.


	22. The Siren

_DRACO_

It had been a very short, very long September. Time was funny. The days ran quick but the weeks ran slow. The weather ran cold and rainy, and the leaves fell from the trees - even the leaves in the forest outside the Love Chamber. 

It was the last day of September now, a Friday. 

He had been looking towards this day for a while now. Next week Pansy would be back from France. October would start and things would get colder and everything would go back to normal. That’s what he had been telling himself the entire time she was gone. 

But he wasn't sure whether things could be normal anymore. 

His feelings for Pansy had never been simple, but lately they were more complicated. She hadn’t written to him the entire time she was in Paris, despite her promises to do so. She said she would come to his the moment she got back, but he didn’t think she would. 

All he had of her anymore was the letter she had written him, the words _always yours_ written in her loopy cursive. It felt less like a promise and more like a souvenir of a life he used to have. It was in his drawer, the second one down where he kept all her letters. He didn’t have to look at it to be able to picture it exactly. 

And there was Iris, too. 

There had never been something like that before. 

Iris had left the Love Chamber half an hour ago. Early. She hadn’t said anything about it but Draco supposed he couldn’t say anything about it either because he had left early before. They hadn’t really spoken that much since Monday, when he had taken her back to his. 

That had been strange. He wasn't sure he meant to do that. Her body had felt so small under his, but she moved with confidence. Her arms were strong even when her legs were shaking. 

She was fragile but strong. She was a vase that would break into a million pieces if you knocked her off the table. You would never be able to clean up all the glass - every time you walked by that spot on the floor she would dig into your feet and hurt you right back. 

He added three drops of Pearl Extract to the potion he was working on, then cast a Sealing Charm. The clock would chime soon and he wanted to leave as soon as it did. Outside the window, all the leaves were colored now - yellow and orange. He reminded himself that he hated her. 

The clock rang. He pushed the doors open and stood in the entrance hall for a second before pushing out into the Department’s Atrium. 

It was her voice that he caught first. He usually recognized voices before faces. Iris was at the end of the atrium, walking towards him with Tracey, Theodore, and Sebastian in tow. 

They were obviously going out. Tracey was wearing some horrendous purple sparkly thing. Iris was wearing black. She regarded him as she walked, her voice trailing off. She had only been part of their little group since the summer, but to an outsider she would look like their leader. She outshone them all, all their colors, in plain black. 

Draco glanced up towards the rest of them. Tracey wasn't exactly grinning, but she was biting her lip to keep from doing so. Sebastian broke eye contact as soon as Draco made it. He looked towards Tracey, who could apparently no longer hold in her laughter. 

It was Theodore’s face that told him, though. He raised his eyebrows, as if Draco standing near him was some sort of challenge that he was determined to step to. He shifted his body a little bit. Moving closer to Iris. 

So they knew, then. Iris’s friends knew about him. 

He hadn’t wanted this to happen. He should be annoyed right now. Instead, he felt a strange sense of power. No matter how much the rest of them hated him, he would always have a grip on Iris. There was nothing they could do about it. 

He pushed himself off the wall, returning his eyes to Iris. He motioned her over to him. He didn’t have anything he needed to say to her, but he wanted her friends to know that she followed his directions. He wanted Theodore to know.

Theodore narrowed his eyes as Iris shot a quick look at Tracey. But she waved her friends on, looking back towards Draco and walking over to him. 

She looked a bit wary, like an animal in the forest who had never seen a person before. He wondered if the reason they hadn’t talked much this week was because she was angry with him. Or bitter. Or sad - sad that he kicked her out of his apartment instead of letting her stay. 

She hadn’t said anything about it, hadn’t objected at all, but there was a sort of slump in her shoulders as she walked out of his room. She had left the door slightly ajar behind her, as if she thought he might follow her. 

“You going out?” He asked her, his voice quiet enough that her friends could only overhear if they were listening very carefully. He didn’t care if they were. No matter how this conversation went, Iris would prove him right later tonight. 

“Yeah, obviously,” she said, gesturing vaguely to her outfit. “And I’m not fucking it off to do anything with you, either.”

“Oh, I’d never expect you to fuck off plans with Theodore,” Draco answered in a low voice. 

She looked a little bit confused at his words. Draco wondered if it was possible she didn’t know. But even Iris didn’t seem like she could be that naive. 

“Did you have a question, or are you just trying to make me angry?”

“You know I like it when you’re angry,” he said, using the same tone he had before. She broke eye contact with him for a second. He spoke again as soon as she looked back up at him. 

“Where are you going?” He asked. 

“The Leaky. I only go there every Friday night,” Iris said. Draco did know that, but it was better if she thought he couldn’t be bothered to notice those things about her.

“Alright,” he said, “when you’re done watching Davis and Corner shove their tongues down each other’s throats, you can come find me. I’ll be at the Siren.”

“What makes you think I'd leave my friends to go to the Siren with you?”

“I know you, Iris. I know you’ll be thinking about me all night.”

“Fuck you,” she said, but didn’t seem as angry as she usually did. She said it like she was reading it off a piece of paper - no emotion behind it. 

“Yeah,” he replied. “See you there.”

She looked at him for a second longer, then turned and walked back towards her friends. Tracey and Sebastian looked slightly amused. Theodore looked put out. She linked arms with Tracey, who whispered something in her ear. 

There was no reason to watch her anymore. He would see her later - she would come to him. But he liked her skirt and the way her hair was pulled up, so he looked at her anyway. 

The Siren managed to be crowded in a glamorous way. Instead of the claustrophobia that patrons of the Leaky Cauldron incurred, the Siren offered an expansive dance floor and private rooms on the upper level. 

Draco went upstairs immediately, leaning over the balcony and watching the expanse of bodies beneath him. They were close enough that he could make out their faces, make out whether or not they were happy or sad. Most people seemed happy. 

The more interesting ones were sad, though. 

Draco and Pansy had come here once. Back before his name had been completely smeared through the mud, back before the Siren was a spot many people knew about. She hadn’t been happy or sad. She had just been alluring and intense and dramatic. The lights had been bright red that night and she looked like a vampire with her pale skin and red lips. 

She would be home soon. She would be home for him.

He missed her, missed her, missed her. 

She had looked so good leaving work today, and she knew it too - he could see it in her eyes. But that was Iris, not Pansy. But he was drunk. It didn’t matter that he mixed them up. 

He had them straight. He and Pansy belonged to each other and Iris was something else entirely. He would let Pansy spend the night at his and wake up to her in the morning. He would make Iris leave. 

Had she really been sad, or is that just what he wanted her to be? Had she cared that he kicked her out? He wanted her to care. He liked the feeling of being cared about and not caring back. 

He wondered what it would have felt like if she had stayed. But it was never her presence he liked, it was her body. So he supposed he wouldn’t have liked it much. He should keep reminding himself of that. 

He walked from the balcony back to his booth and shut the door behind him. It was a small room, a miniscule recreation of the Siren. He couldn’t hear the lyrics to the song playing downstairs, but he could feel the bass beneath his feet. The lights were purple tonight. 

He drank enough that when he stood up he felt his head sink and his body rise. He smiled to himself. He rarely smiled. He didn’t like the way it looked on his face, he never had, but nobody could see him now, including himself, so it didn’t matter. 

He left his booth and returned to the balcony. It was more of a landing than a balcony, really. It wrapped around all the booths in a huge circle above the rest of the club. He leaned over the railing and watched the door. 

It had been long enough. He wanted her to come now. Iris. 

She did, eventually. By the time the door swung open to reveal her, the metal railings on the balcony had left a slight indent in Draco’s skin. He pushed off it and decided to watch her for a second, to see what she would do. 

To see whether she would be one of the happy ones or one of the sad ones or something other. 

She brushed her hair behind her ears, looking around. Looking for him. She didn’t see him and didn’t seem to care. She pushed through the crowd. He never lost sight of her - his eyes were locked into the shape of her shoulders. 

She leaned over the bar, saying something to the bartender. Ordering a drink. 

The bartender set down a shot that flickered with black flames. Draco recognized it immediately - anyone would. Firewhiskey, the strongest version there was. She tossed it down her throat, slammed the glass back down on the bar, and shook her head decisively with her eyes squeezed shut. 

Pansy would never do that. She would sip, savor it. If it was a shot she would throw it down with no reaction, as if it was water. She always looked smooth and polite, or otherwise seductive. He wanted Pansy right now. Or at least it felt like he should. She was a reflex. 

It pissed him off that Iris took that shot. Acting like she needed to get drunk to fuck him. She fucked him in the cold light of day, sober, at work.

He downed his own drink, banishing his glass back to the bar. 

When he looked back up, Iris wasn't alone. There was someone standing next to her. Draco could only make out his side profile. His hair was sweaty and sticking up. Draco didn’t recognize him from school, which meant he was either a Hufflepuff or at least three years younger than him. 

He said something to Iris, he must have, because she smiled in response and shrugged. Draco put his hands on the railing. She was inclining her head slightly, as if she was really listening to what he was saying. 

She never looked like that when Draco was speaking. She just looked like she wanted him to be done so that she could say something back. A side-effect of hating each other. If they even hated each other anymore. 

Iris laughed. Draco pushed off the railing but didn’t take his eyes off her. 

The bartender put two drinks down on the bar in front of them. Iris grabbed one. Turned back to the boy. Her mouth formed the words _thank you_. The boy put his hand on Iris’s arm. Lightly, naturally. She didn’t object. 

Draco was on the stairs then on the floor. He didn’t need to keep his eyes on her because he knew exactly where she was. He pushed through the crowd, ignorant to the people whose shoulders he was knocking into. 

When he broke out of the crowd, Iris was laughing. He tried to remember if he ever heard her laugh before, but he couldn’t think of a time. It was not exactly a pretty laugh but it was hers. After she stopped he could still see it in her eyes, a little twinkle of humor. She took a sip of her drink, the drink the other boy had paid for. 

She wasn't here for the other boy, though. She had come for Draco. 

He emerged from the shadows and her eyes caught his at once. The smile dropped off her face and the humor in her eyes dissolved into a sort of resignation. Fuck that. She shouldn’t be resigning herself to him. He was the one that was supposed to be resigning himself to her. 

The boy she was talking to turned around to see what she was looking at. He was young and had a square shaped jaw. He just looked like a boy. Like if every boy ever was mixed together, this would be the face they came up with. 

He regarded Draco curiously, then turned back to Iris, a silent question on his face. 

Iris put her drink down and stood up. 

Draco entered their bubble, then passed the boy so that he was standing slightly between them. 

“Don’t,” Iris said, but Draco already was.

He turned towards the boy and inclined his head, nodding slightly. A clear signal for him to walk away. Instead, the boy just looked confused. 

“What the fuck?” He asked in a reedy Irish accent that somehow made him seem even younger.

“Go on,” Draco said. Iris was silent, slightly behind his left shoulder. 

“Chill out, mate,” the boy said. “Is she your girlfriend or something?”

“No,” Iris said. Draco turned and looked at her with disdain in his eyes. She still looked resigned. For a second, he wondered whether she might prefer this other boy. But she had come here for him and he knew it. And she knew it too. She was just being difficult because.. he didn’t know why. It didn’t matter. 

“I said _go on_ ,” Draco repeated, taking a step closer to him. An obvious provocation. 

“Easy,” the boy said. 

Draco put his arm out, resting his hand on the bar counter. Sectioning Iris off from him. He raised his eyebrows. 

Then the boy’s eyes caught on something, something on his arm, and widened. He glanced wildly back at Draco’s face, his eyebrows almost comically high on his forehead, and there it was, there it was like always. The realization. 

“You’re -” the boy said, his eyes falling back on the Mark, taking it in. No matter how repulsed people claimed to be by the Dark Mark, they always stared at it for a second. Morbidly fascinated in the remnants of the worst years of Draco’s life. 

“Yes,” Draco spat. He hadn’t meant to show him the Mark. He never wanted anybody to see it. But the damage was done, so he might as well capitalize on it. 

The boy’s eyes ripped away from his forearm and locked onto Iris. He straightened his back, his eyebrows furrowing. He seemed like the type to think of himself as a white knight. He would probably try to take Iris away from Draco, protect her from getting hurt. It was too late for that. 

“Do you know who he is?” The boy asked Iris, taking a slight step forward. 

“Yeah, she knows who I fucking am,” Draco growled, tightening his hand on the bar, tightening the barrier between him and Iris. 

The boy didn’t know what to do now. He was still staring at Iris as if she desperately needed to be saved. Iris was not the type of girl who needed saving. And if she did, this boy wouldn’t be able to do it. 

“I’ve told you to leave twice now,” Draco said coldly, turning his arm slightly so that the Dark Mark caught the purple lights.

But in the end it was Iris who made him leave. She stepped forward slightly, her dress brushing Draco’s arm. He threw a look behind him. Her face was the blankest he had ever seen it before. 

“It’s fine,” she said, looking at the other boy as if Draco wasn't there at all. The lights flashed across her face. “Go.”

The boy glanced down at Draco’s arm one more time, then looked back up at Iris. Draco wondered if he would be difficult, but he just shook his head, muttered something under his breath, then walked away. 

Draco took his arm off the counter so that he could turn and face Iris. She was still holding the drink the boy had bought her. Something purple - or at least it looked that way under the lights. It was harder to see things in her eyes in the dark. 

“Where have you been?” He snarled. 

“Out with my friends. Did you think I was going to show up after ten minutes?”

This was the way it was between them. This was the way it would probably always be. Neither of them spoke to each other gently. Draco never smiled. Iris never laughed at something he said. Her eyes never sparkled around him. They just burned. 

“I’m surprised your self-control lasted this long,” he said, taking a step towards her. 

“I’m sure yours didn’t,” she said back, taking her own step. They were already too close together, so when she moved forward she all but pressed against him. She glanced down, where Draco was already half-hard, then glanced back up. 

She was always more confident when she was drunk. And she seemed determined to prove that tonight.

“We’re going upstairs,” he said, having waited long enough.

“I want to dance,” she replied. 

“I didn’t want you here to dance with me.” He said it to hurt her, maybe. He said it because it was what he would’ve said to her two weeks ago. 

“You go, then, and I’ll go find whatever his name was and take him up on a second drink.”

She didn’t wait for him to answer. Just walked away from him, away from the bar, into the crowd of dancing bodies. She didn’t mind dancing by herself. He caught flashes of her in the lights. He saw her hands in the air, still holding the drink that the other boy had given her. 

Draco did not believe that things happened for a reason. Life was just a series of coincidences, storms that people try their best to weather. There was no such thing as fate or destiny. There was barely such a thing as truth on most days. 

But the dress looked like it was made for her to wear.

Her eyes were closed. Her hair had been pulled up when she left work, but it was down now. She had ironed her curls out so that her hair was straight. It moved the same way the blades of grass outside the Love Chamber window moved when it was windy.

He could no longer tell himself that she wasn't beautiful. She had been pretty from the first time he ever saw her, standing next to Granger in the entrance hall, chewing on her lip. But it had mostly been overshadowed by everything else about her. 

She looked towards him, caught his eye, and stopped dancing. Her shoulders still swayed slightly. The lights caught her face and stayed on her. 

He moved. Towards her. She kept her eyes on him as he walked through the crowd. A new song started. Her hair hung over her forehead. She no longer looked resigned. Her shoulders were straight, her eyes were steady. Her fingers danced through the air at her side. 

He touched the drink in her hand before he ever touched her. Banished it back to the bar with a quick nonverbal. He was sober enough to be able to do nonverbals, then. It sort of felt like he was drunk, though. The song seemed louder than normal. 

She leaned into his ear, her cheek side-by-side with his, her nose brushing his cheekbone slightly. Her nose was always light on his face. 

“You want to dance?” She asked, her voice raised so that he could hear it over the music. 

His hands landed on her waist. He hadn’t ever started moving them, not that he could remember, but now they were finished moving. She relaxed into his touch, moving closer to him. 

Perhaps this was the only language they would ever be able to speak with each other. Heated exchanges followed by possessive touches. She may never laugh with him but he could always stop her in her tracks. 

“No,” he said. “Fuck, no.”

She didn’t smile, but her nose dragged across his cheek and her lips came to his. He pulled her to him, all the way into him. Her body against his was an exhale of breath. Hitting the ground after flying for hours. 

Her presence forced him to the ground. 

No, not her presence. Her body did. Her breath did. Her dress did. 

“You’ll come upstairs now?” He asked when they broke apart. 

“Yeah,” she said. 

He wondered what had changed in the past five minutes. Why was she willing to come with him now? Why didn’t she care whether or not he danced with her? But he knew, he thought he knew. He had come to her. That’s what she wanted. 

She followed him up the stairs. They didn’t touch but he could see the way her hands reached out to him slightly everytime her arms swung. Flexing in the air for a millisecond before swinging back to her side. 

He opened the door to his private booth. The bass sounded on the floor. It was still purple. She paused in the doorway and looked around. 

“I didn’t know they had this,” she said carefully. 

The door swung shut behind her. She looked at him, regarded him. She wanted him to come to her again. She liked making him do things, the same way he liked making her do things. It was a nice dress but he didn’t want her to be in it anymore. 

He sat down. There was sort of a couch. He wondered if they would fuck on this couch or if he would just press her up against a wall. He wondered why he hadn’t thought about it earlier. She was still standing in the doorway. 

He took a sip of whatever was in the bottle on the table. It was too much effort to try to make out the label in the heavy purple light. 

“Did he see us?” Draco asked. 

“Who?” Iris asked back. 

“Bloke who bought you a drink.”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

Draco stood up and grabbed the bottle off the table, taking a swig of it. It was some sort of brandy - it had a sweet edge to it. When he brought the bottle down, Iris had wrapped her arms across her chest. Annoyed.

“No, it doesn’t fucking matter,” Draco said. 

“How drunk are you?” Iris asked.

“Not enough,” he replied. Iris’s eyes narrowed in response. She laughed, but so humorlessly that it sounded more like she was scoffing. 

“Right,” she said, “I suppose you’d have to be blackout to fuck me.” It was an excuse he could’ve used a month ago, but not anymore. He had fucked her sober plenty of times. It was strange, her getting angry. Draco remembered he had been pissed off earlier watching her take a shot. 

“As if you didn’t take a shot as soon as you walked in,” he voiced his thoughts. She uncrossed her arms, letting them swing to the side.

He took a step forward, offering her the bottle. She stared at him for a second, the purple lights dancing in her eyes, then reached forward and grabbed it from him. She raised it to her lips. Drank. Winced as she brought it back down. She never looked polite when she drank. 

She would taste like brandy now. Bittersweet. 

“It wasn't to get drunk,” she said softly, taking a step closer to him and putting the bottle back on the tabletop. 

“No?”

“It was just… to get up the nerve.”

To get up the nerve. Whatever that meant. Iris had always had nerve - that’s what had gotten them into this predicament in the first place. She had been the one to kiss him first, way back in the summer. He would remember that moment for a long time. 

“To get up the nerve...” he repeated quietly, tilting his head slightly to communicate his confusion. 

She didn’t answer - not that he had asked a question. She looked at him and tilted her head herself. Her fingers rubbed together at her sides, looking for something to do. There was a charge in the air, somewhere between the echoing bass and the deep purple lights. 

They just needed to find it between each other. 

“When have you ever needed nerve?” Draco asked quietly. 

Iris looked at him for a second, then shrugged halfheartedly. When her shoulders dipped back down, one of the straps of her dress fell off her shoulder. She didn’t bother to correct it - he wasn't even sure she noticed. 

He wondered how he looked to her. He had never really thought about it before. He didn’t often think about how other people perceived him - he just assumed the general public saw him as put-together and fairly attractive, loathe him though they may.

But it seemed important that Iris perceive him differently than everyone else. 

She brought her hand up to her face, her thumb scratching at a piece of skin beneath her jaw. She moved her hands like this when she felt out of place, when she wanted to fill silence. Movement tricked her brain into thinking that she was doing something. 

The strap of her dress was still hanging. She knew it was there now - she had moved that arm - so she was leaving it for a reason. 

The song changed below them, leaving a second of pure silence in the air. The boy who bought her a drink was down there somewhere. Theodore Nott was probably smoking a cigarette outside of the Leaky Cauldron. But Iris was here, her strap dipping over her shoulder. 

He took a step back and sat down on the couch. She looked confused.

“And now?” Draco asked. “How much nerve do you have?”

He was sitting down and she was standing over him now, but she still looked small. She shrugged again.

“Come on,” Draco said quietly, staring up at her.

“As much as you need me to have,” she said. Her expression was hard to perceive, especially under the lights. He was used to being able to read her better, but he supposed he should just take her words at face value. 

She would do what he needed her to - what he _wanted_ her to, that is. He didn’t need anything from her. 

“Alright,” he said, grabbing the brandy off the table and sitting back. “Take your dress off.”

His head rested lightly against the wall, his back against the soft cotton of the couch. He wrapped his fingers around the neck of the bottle, taking a swig. He kept his hand on it when he took it away from his mouth, raising his eyebrows at Iris. 

She brought her hand to the strap that was already hanging off her shoulders, wrapping it loosely around her middle finger to pull the dress out from her body a little bit. She brought her other hand to her other strap, dragging all her fingers lightly across her chest, pushing it off. 

It fell and took part of the dress with it. The only thing that was keeping the fabric over her torso was the strap around her finger. She exhaled loudly enough that he could hear it over the bass. Her breath wasn't shaky, though - she wasn't nervous. It was more of a sigh. 

A happy resignation. She was allowing herself to fall back into him again, accepting that she would like it, that she would want him even when it was over. And she let the dress fall too. It peeled over her torso, exposing the tops of her breasts.

She moved her hands to the side of it. Unzipping. It was a peculiar sound, that. The zipper. 

But the dress was gone now. Bunched around her waist for a second, but with another tug from her, it was bunching around her heels on the floor. She didn’t usually wear a bra, but she had one on now. It didn’t have straps. 

She stepped out of her shoes next, her height significantly decreasing. She was still taller than him, though. He didn’t hate it. She deserved to be taller than him, maybe. Something about her seemed very tall right now. 

Her hands went behind her back, and he watched the band of her bra loosen, watched it fall a little bit. She kept it in her hand as she brought it away from her body. 

Her breasts were like petals, like the ones that fell from the ceiling of the Love Chamber and dissipated into light over the fountain. Or maybe like the wildflowers in that field outside, that field that might exist and might not. 

He might still loathe her. He might not. 

She looked at him then, her hands pausing on the band of her underwear. He always took them off for her. He thought about making her do it herself, but it had been long enough and he wanted her touching him. He nodded at her, inclined his fingers to tell her that she could come to him now. 

She stepped forward, her bare feet noiseless on the floor. His hands reached out for her before she even got to him, settling in the curve of her hips. She settled on top of him, her legs straddling his effortlessly. 

She sighed again, but _sighed_ seemed like the wrong word. He knew exactly what it meant but couldn’t describe it. It was the sound of her settling back into him. 

His lips found hers. He was right - she tasted like brandy. She was a bit like brandy anyways. She burned going down but there was a subtle sweetness to her. Gentle edges. His hands dug into her waist. 

He liked leaving bruises on her skin. It made it impossible for her to forget him, impossible for her to ignore the things that happened between them.

Her breath caught a little bit in his mouth and her hands caught around the buttons of his shirt. She smelled like vanilla, but there was something deeper to her. A sort of musk. He wondered if it had come from Theodore - if his scent had rubbed off on her before she came to Draco. 

He stopped touching her to shrug his shirt off. He considered letting her be on top, but he didn’t want her in control, not at all, not when it was possible that she smelled a bit like Theodore Nott. 

So instead he linked his arms below her thighs and stood up. She hummed into his mouth. He pushed the brandy away from him, across the table, and hoped it wouldn’t fall over. It didn’t. 

He dropped her right in front of the table, boxing her into it. She gripped his shoulders as he bent her over slightly, letting her feel the indent of the wood in the back of her legs. 

It reminded him of the first time they had ever fucked. That was an impulse on his part, something he thought better of immediately after the fact. During, though… during. She had responded to his touch so easily that it felt like they had been together a thousand times before. 

She hadn’t complained, hadn’t repositioned him or moved his hands. She let him have his way with her and seemed almost grateful for it. 

He wondered whether it would be the same now. Things had changed since then. He wondered when exactly that had happened. 

He flipped her body around. He didn’t even have to push her, not really, for her to lean over the table by herself, her torso pressed into the wood. 

“Yeah?” He breathed, holding her down with one hand and pulling his trousers down with the other one. 

“Yeah,” she said back. “Yeah.”

Whenever he asked her questions like that she always responded twice. Once for him, then once for her. Telling him she wanted it then reminding herself that she did. 

He pushed into her. The bass moved through his body, his free hand snaking around her torso and finding her breast beneath it. She leaned her head down, her cheek still against the wood, to kiss the tops of his hands. 

They had found it, the charge, and they were both channeling it through each other. He loved the way her skin moved when he rocked into her. Making room for him. He put his thumb in his mouth and let her suck it. 

He felt the brandy on his tongue suddenly and wanted her mouth instead. They tasted the same, but he liked the feeling of her tongue, the grip of her lips around his. She always sucked, always wanted his bottom lips between hers. 

It was a familiar feeling by now. 

He flipped her over and she leaned into him instantly, squeezing around him as he thrust back inside her. They didn’t miss beats anymore. If they had known each other when it started, they might as well be sharing one mind now. 

Her breasts brushed against his torso, up and down, soft like petals. He could see a couple of half-moons in them left over from his nails. 

He thrust in deep and instead of pushing her head forward, she threw it back, leaning on her hands. Her eyes were shut, and one of her fingers nudged the abandoned bottle of brandy. 

It gave Draco a hazy idea. 

He grasped for it, eventually managing to wrap his fingers around the bottle. His lips were connected to hers again, and she made a sort of confused humming sound into his mouth. 

He broke apart from her. Grabbed the bottle and took a swig. Her brows furrowed, flickering with the beginnings of anger. But he hadn’t grabbed it to get more drunk. He had grabbed it for her, to see it on her, so that every part of her would taste like brandy, not just her mouth. 

She blinked as he pulled away from her slightly. A slow blink, like she was trying to figure out what was happening. He could stop right now and she would stay in this state for a while, coming down. 

It was just a drop at first. He let it fall from the bottle and hit her shoulder. It trailed down her skin for a second then stopped in the crook of her collarbone. She looked up at him, confused. 

He brought his mouth to her skin and licked it off her. Felt the drop sting his tongue slightly. Felt her hum above him, a noise of satisfaction. 

He pulled out of her then pushed back in. Her grip tightened around his shoulders. He tipped the bottle, letting a little stream of brandy leave the neck and fall onto her shoulder. It tracked down her bare torso in a little rivulet.

He ducked to capture it in his mouth and she brought a hand to his hair, tangling it at the nape of his neck like she always did. It was an anchor for her but an anchor for him, too. He wondered if she knew that - that he wanted her hand there. 

He paused over her breast, letting the brandy trickle into his mouth, his tongue hot over her nipple. She whined at that. He always liked when she whined. 

He fucked into her more. Poured alcohol over her shoulders. Licked it off and felt the bittersweet on his tongue. He loved hearing her, hearing her lose more and more control to him. 

He knew he could ask her to do anything now and she would do it. The thought charged his body even more, so he sped up his movements, returning his lips to hers and kissing her for long enough that she would have to gasp a little when they broke apart. 

He felt like making her lightheaded. 

But all his thought sort of dissolved when he got close, until all he could think about was the shape of her body, the way his hands fit into the curve of her hip, her rose-petal breasts, her heavy eyelids and weak arms and dark hair. 

He felt her whole body pressed against him as he came, felt her chest deflate as she exhaled. He thrust into her one more time to hear her moan. Her skin was sticky now, damp with brandy and the remnants of his tongue. He could see a bruise on her right breast and wondered whether it came from his fingers or his teeth. 

He pulled out.

The bass vibrated through the floor as he stepped away from her, looking up at the ceiling. It seemed higher than normal. He breathed out in a long exhale, then brought his eyes back down.

Iris was still on the table. She was all heavy eyelids and loose shoulders. A chunk of her hair was sticking up in the back, and some of it trailed across her face, stuck on her eyelashes. She wasn't looking at him but he had the odd feeling that she was perceiving him, that she knew he was looking at her. 

He wished, for a second, that she hadn’t charmed her hair to be straight. He liked the way her curls looked after his hands had been in them - frizzy and big and kind of wild. When her hair was like that it was impossible for her to hide what had happened between them. 

Not that she was the one trying to hide anything. 

He stepped away from her and turned around so that he wouldn’t be staring at her. He heard her shift from behind him. He stared at a spot on the wall that seemed slightly darker than the rest, but perhaps that was just a trick of the light. Maybe if he stared at it intently enough it would be easier, easier to break out of whatever the fuck this was. 

He pulled on his boxers. Didn’t bother with his trousers. 

He sat down on the couch again, his eyes flicking up to find Iris. She was standing, her dress back on her body loosely. She hadn’t zipped it. Her feet were bare and looked childish against the floor. 

She caught his eye for a second then walked to him, sat down next to him. They weren’t touching, not really, but her leg brushed his. He wondered whether something in his gaze had made her come to him. Did she think he wanted her here now? Next to him?

No. He didn’t. He didn’t say anything. 

He took a couple of breaths. His left hand twitched a little bit on the couch. Probably aching for a cigarette. He could really fucking use a cigarette right now. 

“You won’t send me away this time?” Iris said. He turned towards her lazily. Her tone wasn't bitter, just curious. Her leg brushed his again but this time they both held the contact. They fucked all the time but movements like these confused him. Her head was dangerously close to his shoulder. 

“Why not?” He asked. “We both got what we wanted.”

Her head did touch his shoulder then, dipped down slightly to rest against him. She moved a little bit, finding a spot. He felt frozen. He should have told her to move as soon as she touched him, as soon as she sat down. Was it too late now?

No, it wasn't. He could be cold to her. He could say anything to her that he wanted. But, for some reason, he didn’t. Didn’t want to use his head to think of something to say. Had things really changed that much in the past week? Were they different now?

“I don’t know if I did,” Iris said quietly. 

“What, you want to go again?” Draco asked. He would, he could. If she wanted.

Maybe things had changed on Monday when he had grabbed her wrist in the lift at work and held it until they were in his bedroom. She looked at him a lot when they fucked that time and their bodies were really close. He wasn't sure which one of them had been holding them together. 

“Not what I meant,” she said. 

He grabbed the brandy off the table and finished it off. It was just a swig left. It tasted like Iris. Or Iris tasted like it. They tasted the same now, intertwined. Her hair smelled like alcohol and something flowery. 

He had always known she was pretty. It was kind of obvious. But lately he noticed that fact, was aware of it even when he didn’t mean to be. It was harder to dismiss it. Her dress was still unzipped on the side. He could slip his hand beneath the fabric and feel her skin. 

God, fuck. He had gone a long time without Pansy. That could explain this - that could still explain all of this. It had to. As soon as Pansy came back to him, he would stop with Iris. He wouldn’t need Iris anymore, no matter how little Pansy came to visit him. 

He didn’t have to wait until she got home from Paris. He could just stop now. 

Without any mind for Iris’s head, Draco pushed up off the couch. He felt her body sink slightly as he stood up. He grabbed his trousers and pulled them on, deftly buckling his belt. He pulled his shirt over his head. Behind him, he heard Iris zipping her dress up. Good.

He didn’t look at her again. He just walked towards the door to the booth and pushed it open. It was hard to know how he felt about Iris when his mood changed this quickly. Fuck, why had he let her rest on him like that? 

The air was cooler out on the balcony. He strolled across it, a couple paces, and leaned against the railing. There were less people on the dance floor now than there had been. He wasn't sure what time it was but assumed it was late - there was a different bartender now, the girl whose hair changed color to match whatever drinks she was serving. 

He heard Iris’s shoes on the floor and felt the air shift beside him. She leaned on the balcony too but didn’t look at him. 

“Go back to your friends,” Draco said. He needed a cigarette soon. Maybe he was addicted. 

“They aren’t here,” Iris responded. Her voice was more even than it had been back in the booth. Devoid of emotion. 

“Find them, then. What makes you think I want to be around you?” 

There was a second of silence. Draco knew that Iris could easily bring up any of the things he had said to her back inside, any of the things he had done to her. He hoped she had used up all her nerve back inside. 

“I don’t really like you much, either,” she said. 

“Fucking lie.”

“Whatever,” she said, not even bothering to deny it. 

She pushed off the balcony and he watched her sway a little bit. Drunker than he thought - they both were. He felt the brandy heavy in his veins. She probably felt it all over, little buzzes, little stings. A sweet taste on her tongue. She would let him taste her right now if he wanted to. 

The door opened, though, snapping him out of his thoughts. As if on cue, Tracey Davis stepped into the Siren. The sequins on her dress looked even more garish in the purple lights. Following her was Sebastian, who was wearing a vacant smile and looked completely out of it. His shirt must have been white at some point, but now it was see-through.

And there was Theodore. He had a dark look about him. Probably angry Iris had come to Draco. 

Iris noticed them too. She didn’t bother saying anything to Draco, just walked away from him, towards the stairs. His eyes dragged from Theodore to the back of Iris’s neck. He watched her walk for a second then pushed off the railing himself to follow her. 

He tried not to analyze his behavior when it got like this. There was no reason for him to be following Iris - no reason he wanted to think about, at least. 

She was a couple paces in front of him. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, Tracey caught sight of her and nudged the boys. 

“Iris!” She shook her head, grinning. “We thought you might be dead or something! You were supposed to come back!” Draco wondered whether Tracey only spoke in exclamations. 

Iris shrugged, clearly a bit out of it herself. Draco paused on the stairs behind her, his body still in the shadows, and watched closely as Iris walked to the group. 

He thought Tracey might throw her arms around her in one of those overexaggerated displays of affection that girls were so prone to. But it was Theodore who reached out to her first, his hand wrapping around her loose arm, tugging Iris to him almost possessively. 

Annoyance flickered in Draco’s stomach. He descended the rest of the stairs in a split second, drawing everyone’s eyes. 

Tracey raised her eyebrows, looking almost amused. Sebastian looked like he didn’t quite understand what was going on, but he lolled his head towards Theodore and raised his eyebrows a bit. 

Theodore looked sort of murderous. He took a step forward, clearly trying to prove something, but his hand was still locked around Iris’s arm. He tugged her a little bit. If she was sober, she could’ve taken a step forward, but instead she stumbled and let out a little gasp.

Theodore whirled around and she put her hand on his chest to steady herself, mumbling something to him. Had she been this drunk upstairs? Or had the brandy hit her while they were standing on the balcony? 

Theodore turned back around, glaring even harder at Draco. 

“Did you do something to her?” He growled. 

Draco stepped forward. Everyone in the fucking bar seemed to think that Iris needed to be protected, protected from him. Everyone in the fucking world. She could do what she wanted, and she wanted him. Theodore couldn’t have her, no matter how much he wanted her. That’s what he was really angry about. 

“Only what she wanted,” Draco said evenly. 

“She doesn’t want you,” Theodore said, letting go of Iris’s arm. Iris looked up, her eyelashes heavy over her eyes.

“Easy, Theo,” Tracey said, stepping forward herself and putting her arm on Theodore’s shoulder. “Come on,” she said, tugging at him slightly. 

He gave Draco one last scathing look, then turned and allowed Tracey to steer him away from the scene. Draco’s eyes fell on Iris, who was still staring at him. He couldn’t tell what her face was saying. 

She shook her head slightly. Draco wasn't sure what the fuck that meant, either. She didn’t look that drunk. She looked fine. Not that it mattered. He wasn't sure why he was here anymore, so he turned and walked back up the stairs. 

When he got to the top, though, he walked to the balcony instead of his room, leaned over it. He found them quickly, the four of them. Tracey’s dress was easy to spot. She and Theodore were off to the side, having some sort of animated conversation. Tracey was moving her hands a lot. 

Iris and Sebastian were together too, talking less animatedly. Iris shrugged about something. Draco wondered whether they were talking about him. 

Eventually, the two groups reconvened. Tracey said something, then Theodore opened his arms. Iris hugged him. Draco pushed off the balcony. His fingers curled into his palm, his nails digging slightly into his skin. A fist.

He turned back around, facing the door to his private booth. Iris had left it slightly ajar. She was always doing that with doors, as if she expected him to follow her through them. As if she expected him to invite her back in. 

_Did you do something to her?_

Fuck that. Theodore would never know what Draco could do to her, how much she liked it. She would like it more than anything Theodore could ever do to her, that much was clear. He didn’t have a chance. It didn’t matter whether he thought he did. 

Draco turned around to throw another look over the balcony. All four of them were gone, though.

He checked to make sure the bottle of brandy was empty. It was. He found himself not wanting to be at the Siren anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was really fun to write so lmk what you think! I love reading all of your comments :)


	23. Fall

_IRIS_

Iris shrugged her coat onto her shoulders as she stepped out of her apartment building, pulling it tight around her body and inching her hands into her sleeves. 

October had announced itself with a five-degree drop in temperature and wild gusts of wind. It hadn’t rained yet, but it was only the third, so Iris supposed that was coming too. 

The leaves outside the Love Chamber’s window were properly fall colored now - rich oranges and yellows. A couple of them had started to fall. 

September had felt like a weird in-between, a gray area between the suffocating humidity of August and the undeniable chill of October. September had been a weird in-between in a lot of ways, actually. 

Things were different between Iris and Draco now. Neither one of them had acknowledged it out loud, but Iris knew it was true. She could no longer convince herself that she hated him. She didn’t get angry with him over small things anymore, and she didn’t really care when he offhandedly insulted her. 

His insults paled in comparison to the other things he had said to her, done to her - the whispers and nods and little noises from the back of his throat. He acted bitter with her to prove to himself that he still could. She could do the same, but it was too much effort.

September was a month for change. 

It was Wednesday now, Wednesday morning, and Iris took off her jacket and levitated it absentmindedly to one of the hooks on the wall. Draco was already in and already working. They were finishing their treatment of Felix Felicis with the love magic from one of the gemstones in the room. 

They’d probably have the results by the end of the day today. 

They could’ve had them Monday, but, like the weather, Draco had cooled off considerably lately. He was more withdrawn than usual, as if he was trying to distance himself from Iris’s mere presence - but not in an angry way. He wasn't trying to annoy her. He just wasn't speaking to her. 

The last time they had fucked was on Friday night at the Siren. 

Once she got home that night she had taken off all her clothes and stared at herself in the mirror, running the pads of her fingers over little marks and bruises and feeling the leftover stickiness of the brandy on her skin. 

She looked at her body and tried to picture it from Draco’s point of view. He had leaned back on the couch and asked her how much nerve she had - the sort of casual seduction only he could pull off. He had watched her blankly as she pushed the straps off her shoulders, unzipped, let her dress fall and stepped out of her shoes. 

But afterwards he had told her to come to him and his hands were steady on her waist and his mouth was perfect against hers, so perfect, like he could read her mind and knew exactly what she was going to do. 

So maybe he did like it. 

He had fucked her enough times that she supposed she shouldn’t be worrying about whether or not Draco liked the look of her. Whether or not he had actually liked watching her undress.

At home in her bathroom mirror, still somewhat drunk, marvelling over the marks he had left behind, she thought he had to like her. He had to. And the way he had spoken to her friends, too. 

He had been so cold to Theodore out of nowhere, singled him out for no reason Iris could think of besides the fact that he was the nearest boy to her. And he had gotten angry at that other boy, the one from earlier who had bought her a drink. 

So you really couldn’t blame her for thinking maybe. Maybe he might be willing to admit to himself that he wanted her in a tangible way, a way he didn’t have to deny anymore. A way he could give into whenever he wanted. 

A way that didn’t have to just be about fucking her. 

But since then, they had barely spoken. He had gone through mood swings before, showed up late to work or drunk, but in those times he seemed to always have more to say to her instead of less. 

All those times had been caused by things going on with Pansy. Iris thought that this withdrawal from her might have something to do with Pansy too, but if it did, the _Prophet_ hadn’t reported on it. 

She exhaled, reading over her notes to make sure she hadn’t made any glaring errors. She realized she had only done one test on the hearts and sighed, taking a vial of the freshly brewed potion and walking over to the display cases. 

She could call Sadie and Simon about it - about Draco. She should probably call them anyways. It had been a while and she missed them. Besides, Simon often knew random gossip off the back of his old Beauxbatons friends. Maybe he would know something about Pansy or Draco that Iris didn’t - something that could explain his strange behavior. 

Grabbing her parchment out of the air beside her, she scribbled down a couple of quick notes about the hearts that she was relieved to see matched her previous experiment. 

When she turned around to walk back to her station, though, Draco was gone. She wouldn’t have noticed, but her eyes had a habit of falling on him whenever she walked away from the hearts, and his station was decidedly empty. 

She would’ve assumed that he was temporarily gone, but his cauldron was empty and all of his vials and notes had been organized the way he did before he left work for the day. 

Shaking her head slightly, Iris stepped into the entrance hall, then tried the Department’s atrium, but there was nobody in either room. 

So he had left early. 

It was unlike him, but Iris couldn’t really think of any alternate explanations. The thought pissed her off slightly. It was one thing to not talk to her as much, but leaving the Love Chamber in the middle of the day felt even more personal. 

Like he couldn’t stand to be around her even when it came to work.

Maybe she had it wrong. Maybe the Siren had changed his mind. Maybe seeing her undress like that had turned him off her, or he hadn’t liked the way she had reacted to the brandy, or he was pissed off about their conversation afterwards. 

Maybe she had fucked up somehow and hadn’t realized it and now he didn’t want to carry on with her anymore. She didn’t usually think this much about him. Where October had brought him coldness, it seemed to have brought her a strange sense of warmth. 

Warmth was the wrong word, though. It was much more destructive than warmth. It was scalding hot inside her, capable of causing a natural disaster. Lava.

She wondered where he had gone as she finished her summary of the treatment and sent it up to Shacklebolt’s office. There wasn't much to do after that, not until she got the next assignment from the Minister, so she stared out the window and watched the grass sway in the slight breeze. 

There had been wildflowers over the summer, but they weren’t there anymore. It was the causal sort of wilting that you don’t notice over days. But then you look up one day and the flowers are rotten.

Not for the first time, Iris thought about looking in the Mirror of Erised. She didn’t know what she most desired in the world. Perhaps if she did, she would feel a little bit less aimless. She would have something to actively work towards. 

But she had heard all the stories of the people who wasted away in front of it and didn’t want to take that chance. 

Besides, a piece of parchment appeared on her desk with Hermione Granger’s familiar handwriting on it. 

_Iris,_

_Minister Shacklebolt has informed me that you’ve completed your task for the week. I was wondering whether you’d join me in my office? Nothing formal, I just have a couple of questions for you at your earliest convenience._

_Thank you,_

_Hermione J. Granger_  
Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement  
Deputy to the Minister for Magic 

Iris sent the letter back up with a quick RSVP, happy for an excuse to get out of the Love Chamber. As vast as the room was, it sometimes felt claustrophobic. 

The lift was empty, but the other wizards she passed in the hallways gave her space. Ministry employees knew better than to get in the way of someone from the Department of Mysteries - even people ten years her senior ducked against the wall to let her pass. 

Iris would rather they just treat her as an equal, but she didn’t want to stop and explain that to them, so she just smiled tightly and made her way up to Hermione’s new office. Since Iris had been hired, Hermione had been promoted. 

She was still rumored to be next in line for Minister, which would make her one of the youngest in history. In Iris’s opinion, she would do a great job. 

The door to Hermione’s office swung open noiselessly as soon as Iris stepped onto the threshold, and Hermione stood up from her desk to greet her. 

“Hello, Iris,” she smiled. 

“Hello,” Iris returned, stepping in. There was nice light - big windows with curtains drawn back. The room smelled of old books, which was nostalgic and a bit comforting. Despite being the same age as her, Hermione always seemed much wiser than Iris. Like an aunt you would turn to for unbiased advice. 

“Is this another progress report?” Iris asked, sitting down in one of the chairs facing Hermione’s desk. 

“Not a formal one,” Hermione replied, sitting down herself. She cocked her head at Iris. “I just wanted to check in - it’s been a little while.”

“Well, it’s always nice to hear from you.”

Hermione smiled softly, but it faded from her face as she began to speak. “I suppose there’s no point in skirting the issue. Working in the Love Chamber is notoriously difficult. It’s been that way for ages. We’re just now starting to recognize patterns - getting younger people in, no more than two people working - you know what I mean.”

She paused. In truth, Iris had no idea what she meant. All she knew about the Love Chamber was her firsthand experience from the last four months, which only included working beside Draco. 

But it seemed that Draco was the very thing Hermione wanted to talk about. 

“Malfoy isn’t exactly known for his partnership. He’s an excellent potioneer, but he can be quite abrasive. And while he’s usually incredibly reliable, he does have his… how shall I put this… rough patches.”

Iris wondered for a second whether Hermione was consulting her about firing him. She felt a spark of something shoot through her. Yes, he was in an aptly named _rough patch_ right now, but Iris didn’t want him to be replaced.

She didn’t want to have to learn how to work with someone new. 

And if he didn’t see her everyday for work, if they weren’t forced to be in each other’s vicinity - well, it would be much easier for them to reassess their… thing. Whatever it was. It would be easier to call it off.

“I know I gave him a negative review in the summer,” Iris cut in. Hermione raised her eyebrows slightly, but didn’t object to Iris speaking. “But I was wrong. He’s right for the job - he’s smart and he knows what he’s doing. Like you said, he’s always been a good potioneer.”

“Of course, that’s true,” Hermione replied, narrowing her eyes slightly. “That’s why we hired him. But being good at the job isn’t everything - there will always be other people who can make a good potion. The Love Chamber isn’t a job you can do alone - it’s a partnership by nature. And Draco… suffice to say that _alone_ has been his default for a long time.”

Iris got the impression that Hermione was studying her, figuring something out. She wasn't sure how to stop it. 

“Did he tell you he was leaving early today?” She asked. 

“No…” Iris replied, trailing off. 

“That’s exactly what I mean. He didn’t tell us either, mind you, I just saw him walking away outside my window.” She gestured to the glass behind her. “Does he often leave early?”

“No,” Iris said, probably a little bit too quickly. “He’s usually really professional. Maybe there was an emergency?”

“You’re certainly more defensive of him than you were last time we spoke,” Hermione observed carefully. There was clearly a subtext to her words, but Iris wasn't sure exactly what it meant. “I suppose that counts for something.”

Iris nodded. It was sort of an awful feeling, not knowing whether or not Hermione had figured her out. She was too smart for her own good - too smart for Iris’s good, at least. 

“Well, I’m here if you need me,” she said. “You’re doing great work down there from what Kingsley tells me.”

Eager to take the change in subject, Iris smiled. “Soon enough you’ll know yourself. Congratulations on the promotion - I should’ve said so earlier.”

“Oh, please, don’t worry about it,” Hermione said, but a smile grew on her face. “That’s kind, though. Thank you.”

Hermione stood up, and Iris followed suit, relieved that she wasn't planning on probing any further into whatever existed between Iris and Draco. 

“Take care, Iris,” she said, and Iris returned the sentiment. “And… really, there will always be other people who can make a good potion.”

Hermione extended her hand and Iris took it, hoping that her palms weren’t too sweaty. There was definitely subtext to the conversation now, something Hermione knew but wasn't saying. Iris just smiled at her and pretended she hadn’t picked up on it at all. 

She apparated back home, not wanting to walk in the wind. As soon as she got into her apartment, she cast an _Incendio_ on the little fireplace and cast a couple of charms to start dinner. As soon as there were embers in the flames, she could use them to call Sadie and Simon. 

She needed to catch up with them. And she needed answers about what was going on with Draco.

Simon answered on the first ring, his head appearing in her fireplace and blinking a couple of times before steadying. Sadie appeared a couple of seconds after him. 

They exchanged pleasantries and exclamations of missing each other. Iris meant every one of them wholeheartedly. Life had been simple then, back in America, when her biggest worry had been third-wheeling her two best friends all the time. 

Even hearing their voices made nostalgia stab at her stomach. 

Eventually, she got to the meat of the conversation. She tried to bring it up casually. 

“Have you heard any news about Pansy Parkinson lately?” She asked, realizing after the fact that there was no way to make that question sound even remotely casual. 

“Pansy Parkinson?” Simon asked, confusion littering his voice. 

“Yeah,” Iris replied. “Her and Blaise are sort of an… inside joke here. I was just wondering if you had any gossip that the _Prophet_ doesn’t.”

Sadie and Simon chuckled. 

“Yeah,” he said, “they do make a funny pair. But nobody I know is talking much about them.”

Iris hummed. She might as well go all in if she had gotten this far. 

“Anything about Draco?”

Sadie raised her eyebrows amidst the flames.

“I’m not sure either,” Simon said. “Why the sudden interest in the goings-on of British pureblood society?”

“It’s not a sudden interest,” Iris said, attempting to defend herself. “I have to deal with Draco’s emotional fallout, so I may as well have the complete picture.”

“What do you mean, _emotional fallout?_?” Sadie asked. “Is he lashing out at you?”

“The opposite, actually. He hasn’t really spoken to me in a little while.”

“Is that not normal? I didn’t think you two were having deep conversations at work,” Sadie chuckled, but her smile dropped quickly when Iris didn’t laugh along with her. 

“Um… no, it’s not really normal,” Iris said. They were on the brink of figuring it out and she knew it. “He’s… not saying anything to me. Like, not even his regular rude shit.”

“And why is this a bad thing?” Simon asked, but there was an edge to his voice. As if he suspected, as if he could think of a reason why herself. 

Iris felt a hot flash run through her body. It was easy to forget how much wizarding society hated Draco when her friends here didn’t really care that much. For some reason she thought that Simon and Sadie wouldn’t care either.

“Right,” Iris whispered to herself. There was really no choice now but to just come out with it. “We… sort of… well, working together in the Love Chamber, obviously there’s a lot of love magic in the air…” she trailed off. 

She hadn’t had to tell anyone before, not really. Sebastian had suspected it, Tracey narrowed it down, and Iris hadn’t been the one to confirm it to Theodore. Having to put her relationship with Draco into her own words made her face flush with embarrassment. 

There was no way Sadie and Simon couldn’t guess exactly what she was about to say, but they didn’t say anything. There was a moment of silence. 

“Yeah. So. We’ve sort of been sleeping together for a couple months.”

The silence continued, pervasive. She didn’t know whether she should try to fill it, try to offer explanations, or whether she should wait for them to speak. In the wake of their response she felt like backtracking. Maybe she could say it was all a joke, some sort of prank. 

But when Simon asked if she was serious, his tone devoid of all his usual playfulness, Iris just said yes. 

There was another silence then. Shorter but just as awkward. Iris wished she could see them, really see them - not just their faces in the fire, but their bodies, the intricacies of their expressions. She felt like she was blind to their true reactions. 

“Iris…” Simon started. Sadie picked up where he left off, that way they always did, but this time it wasn't funny. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said quietly.

Simon’s face moved up and down slightly. Nodding. 

“I mean, we all know about him and Pansy,” he said. Iris nodded back. “I guess if I’m being blunt here - you’d always be the second choice. Which you shouldn’t be.”

“It’s just a casual thing,” Iris replied. “I’m not emotionally involved or anything. Like you said, I know about Pansy. I’m fine being in second place or whatever. I don’t really care.” It occurred to her that perhaps she was protesting too much.

Sadie winced. “You just called Simon to try to get insider information on why he might be talking to you less. We don’t know everything - we’re not trying to step on your toes. But it sounds like maybe… you might care.”

Simon and Sadie were always a united front. They didn’t even have to talk to each other most times to come up with the exact same opinion. It was usually funny, a party trick that they could pull out. Some sort of soulmate Occlumency. 

But when their mutual opinion was some odd combination of warnings and pity, it was much less fun. 

“You can do what you want, Iris,” Simon clarified. “We’re just saying that you should be careful.”

“Of course,” Iris said, her tone sounding blank and reedy, “yeah, I am.”

“Right, well… good. Draco isn’t the type of person that cares about other people, you know. He only gives a fuck about himself and maybe Pansy. He’ll never be good to you, he’ll never be gentle - he can’t be.”

It had never been awkward between the three of them before, not that Iris could remember, but the silence that hung between them now was thick and uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” Iris said. “Anyways, has Graves been getting on you lately?”

It was a clumsy transition and she knew it, but Sadie and Simon seemed relieved to take it. They chatted about Iris’s old boss for a little while, then talked about Sadie’s mom’s new obsession with muggle yoga. 

It was a normal conversation. They laughed and accidentally interrupted each other and Iris missed her two old friends acutely. But there was an edge to it, an acknowledgement that they disagreed - that Simon and Sadie thought that Iris should stop fucking around with Draco. 

They eventually exchanged drawn-out goodbyes. Sadie and Simon’s faces disappeared from her fireplace. One of the embers fell and cracked at the bottom of the stone, sending up a pop of sparks. 

It was dark outside now. Iris finished her dinner.

She lay in bed with Draco on her mind. She shouldn’t be thinking about him, but it was almost a reflex now. She settled into her mattress, picturing his hands. They were steady but wild. Unpredictable, but they fit everywhere they landed. 

Iris knew if she went into the bathroom she could see their remnants on her skin. 

_He’ll never be gentle_.

No, he wouldn’t be. As polished as he came off, Draco was all rough edges. His tailored suits and perfect hair only served to hide the bitterness he kept enveloped inside himself, the latent anger at everyone besides himself and Pansy for the events of the war. 

He could lash out at anyone because somewhere within himself he believed that everyone hated him. He wasn't usually wrong. 

He was blunt to a fault. Iris used to think it rude, but in its absence she craved it. She wished he would say anything to her, no matter how crudely honest. She preferred his normal cold outspokenness to his current cold silence. 

Iris didn’t really want him to be gentle with her. She liked looking at the bruises he left behind. She liked the way he touched her. She liked the way her heart rate picked up when they so much as made eye contact, the way she was never sure whether it would happen right up until he grabbed her wrist. 

_He’ll never be good to you._

Maybe he wouldn’t. But she couldn’t help thinking he might. 

The first time they fucked he had acted disgusted with himself afterwards, ignoring any mention of it for days - weeks. He never gave in easily after that - it was always in the heat of an argument, his way of dominating her, of winning their constant fights. 

Then he had started seeking her out himself. Just at work, but he no longer ignored what was happening between them. Then outside of work, in the lift or the alley outside the Leaky. 

Then he had taken her back to his apartment. He had fucked her on his bed, the same bed Iris was sure he had fucked Pansy in a thousand times. He had pushed her away afterwards, but the act itself was proof enough. 

And now he sought her out outside of work - or he had. Their relationship was no longer heat of the moment. It was a knowledge that existed between the two of them, the knowledge that they would fall back on each other. Collide, more like.

And at the Siren. He had thrown her insults, pulled his trousers up and pushed out of the door. But before that, before any of that… her head had been resting on his shoulder. He let her stay there. They had talked, talked about something she didn’t quite remember because she could feel him breathing beneath her cheek. 

It didn’t matter if he pushed her off now. She knew a day would come when he wouldn’t. Someday he would break down completely and she could lean on him whenever she liked. 

_There will always be other people who can make a good potion,_ Hermione had said. 

That was true. But Iris found she liked the way Draco did it. 

She wasn't sure what that meant or what exactly she wanted to happen between them. It wasn't as if she was hoping he would start taking her out to dinner and accompanying her to work parties.

_You’ll always be his second choice_.

That one was harder to stomach. Pansy had been out of the country, otherwise Iris’s relationship with Draco wouldn’t have lasted anywhere near as long as it did. 

There was no way to rationalize it. 

But she wanted to. 

There was something that existed between them now, something other than sex. Iris had recognized it. And whatever it meant, she would make Draco recognize it too.


	24. Return

_DRACO_

Finally, finally, the air was cold again. There was a definite bite to it as he stepped out of the Ministry. The sun was still high in the sky, a couple hours away from setting. 

He had just left work early and hadn’t said a word to Iris or anyone else. He hadn’t ever done something like that before, but for some reason he didn’t think he could bear being around her for a moment longer. 

Whatever had happened between them at the Siren on Saturday was unnerving. He hadn’t meant to speak to Theodore like that, hadn’t meant to let her rest on his shoulder, hadn’t meant any of it. 

But he had set it up. He was the one who told Iris to come to Siren - long before he was drunk, long before he was even there. He told her to come in the atrium of the Department of Mysteries, while she was surrounded by friends, while she was wearing that dress. 

Something was wrong with him. Something had to be wrong with him to behave the way he was behaving. And whatever it was, he would fix it. 

The problem began when Pansy left for Paris. Her absence had left a strange sort of cavity in his life that he had been desperate to fill. Nobody could ever give him what she could but he had to try. Anything was better than nothing. 

It was nothing new. He had always done this, a sort of self-medication. Supplements. But other girls’ hands were ghosts, soundless and black and white. Pansy was sharp nails and color so saturated that it looked like it was bleeding. 

Iris had been black and white too. Just a body that happened to be near him. Just a way to take advantage of her, to embarrass her, to get one over on her in their perpetual argument. 

But there were colors everywhere at the Siren with her. Not just the lights blinking their eternal pattern, temporary flashes fading into deep purple chasms. She was color too. He had gone home and lay down with his clothes still on and thought about the way she breathed. 

Every time she inhaled he could see it moving through her body, a little wave crashing through her chest and into her stomach. When she closed her eyes the movement of her lashes formed earthquakes deep within him. 

When he fucked her, her body felt familiar in an almost forbidden way. He shouldn’t know the feeling of her but he did, every time he fucked her he knew the way her legs fell around his back. He knew the way her hand tangled into his hair. 

And afterwards… afterwards. A breath between them, the way her leg brushed his, testing the waters. Their eyes met like reluctant magnets. He hated the inevitability that existed between them lately, but not as much as he hated the way her body had relaxed into his, the way her head had dipped against him. 

But it was only after Pansy left that things had changed with Iris. 

Draco knew once he had her again Iris would go back to black and white. 

If you put a person underground, someday they would get used to the darkness. Their eyes would grow and their skin would pale. The sky would become such a distant memory that it would seem more like a rumor than a truth, and they'd resign themselves to the dirt.

Like Draco had resigned himself to Iris. 

But there is nothing underground that can hope to compare to the sky. 

And Pansy was home now, and she was like flying during a thunderstorm, rain whipping your back, soaring on erratic gusts of wind and dodging impulsive bolts of lightning. Touching down and wanting to go back up. 

Those were the only times Draco could remember experiencing pure happiness, unfettered by his father’s warnings, the ghosts of Voldemort around his life, the presence of Voldemort in his house. 

Once during sixth year he had gone up in a rainstorm. Lightning was cracking like bullets and he hadn’t bothered to cast a protection spell around his broom. He thought about doing it but getting struck by lightning seemed like an easy way to go, and he would probably be dead by the end of the school year anyway. 

But there was something about that day. There was a blue patch in the sky, some wild bit of air that had escaped the cloud cover, and he hurtled up into it before falling down, rain soaking him to his bones. 

When he left the pitch his hair was hanging in his face, beaded with moisture. His hand was slippery around his broom handle. 

He remembered thinking that he probably should’ve cast a protection spell, reminding himself to do so next time. To anyone else the thought would probably be meaningless, but the fact that he wanted to stay alive had been a grand realization. 

Perhaps that had been a turning point. After that, he had doubled down on his attempts to kill Dumbledore - no more poisoned mead and cursed necklaces, no more hopeless gambles. He would fix those fucking cabinets and he would show them all. 

That was the day he had made the decision that he would do whatever he needed to to live. He would do whatever he needed to to feel the sensation of flying in the rain again. 

It was a decision that had cost him his reputation, his family, his home, Pansy - in short, all he ever had. He wondered if the people at the _Daily Prophet_ knew that his other options had been getting struck by lightning or killed by the Dark Lord’s hand in front of his mother. 

It was best not to dwell on these things, though. 

Because Pansy was home. She had gotten back on Monday. She told him in her letter that she would come and see him as soon as she returned. She hadn’t, but she had sent another letter in her place telling him she would come over Wednesday night. 

It wasn't quite night yet. The sun was barely flirting with setting as Draco walked through the wards into his apartment, letting his shoulders sink as he crossed the threshold. 

It was cleaner in here than it had been in a long time. Draco himself felt cleaner. He had barely spoken to Iris since the Siren. Everything with her had just been a delayed reaction to Pansy, and now that Pansy was home things would go back to how they were. 

He wouldn’t need Iris anymore - hadn’t ever needed her, actually. 

And once he saw Pansy, once he fucked her like flying in the rain, he wouldn’t want Iris, either. He knew he wouldn’t, couldn’t. Being underground was nothing, nothing next to the sky. 

He lay back on his bed and closed his eyes, trying to remember the way Pansy felt underneath him. It had been so long, weeks before she had even left for Paris. Almost two months now. He wasn't sure he had ever gone that long without her. 

She would be perfect just like always. 

It was strange, trying to imagine her. He couldn’t quite picture her face, which was silly because he used to see her every day during sixth year. He knew exactly what her hair looked like, the shape of her lips and the color of her eyes, the way her nose upturned slightly at the end. But he couldn’t put her features together into a face. 

It frustrated him so he got up. He drank a glass of wine, careful not to overpour. Pansy might get angry if he was drunk - besides, he didn’t want to miss anything. He didn’t want to be out of it at all, not with her. Never with her. 

The sunset stained the skyline a deep orange, slowly robbing the rest of the sky of its blue. The sun itself looked like the end of a cigarette as it sunk below the horizon. The world was lit by a great flaming ball of light and muggles didn’t believe in magic. 

The truth was strange and Draco rarely acknowledged it, not even within his own brain. 

Did he like fucking Iris drunk because he remembered it less, because it was easier to make bad decisions? Or did the alcohol just give him a way to do what he wanted without his father’s voice in the back of his brain?

The former. Neither. Fuck. What? 

Pansy would be there soon. He didn’t have a shirt on. 

The sun was gone and his apartment was dimly lit by ceiling lamps in the kitchen and the reflection of other people’s lights through his windows. He stared at his Dark Mark as he put down his glass of wine, empty now. 

Some days it looked faded, as if the dark magic was slowly leaving his body as the years fell behind him. But that was wishful thinking, a trick of the light. It never really changed and it never would. It looked dark black tonight, as dark as it had been when the Dark Lord had first touched his arm. 

He had wanted to scream then. His eyes welled up with tears immediately and the sounds of his Aunt Bella’s cackles pushed into his brain like knives. Narcissa looked like she was at a funeral and Lucius was as emotionless as a headstone beside her. 

He had been so embarrassed in that moment, ashamed that he was crying. He had felt like a child. He _had_ been a child then, and he knew that now. He had been a terrible, arrogant child. He never outgrew his hubris, he just became aware of it. But nobody deserves a tragedy - or maybe he did deserve it, if he was to believe the _Prophet_.

He was thinking about the war a lot tonight. Too much. There was no reason for it, never any reason for it. There was no reason behind most of the things he had done between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, and even less reason for the things that had been done to him. 

Did he deserve it?

Across the apartment, he heard the sound of the door handle begin to turn. 

He got up at once, turning towards the door. Two months without her. She would probably walk in, make eye contact with him for a second, then bend down to take off her heels and leave them at his door. 

The door swung open slowly and there she was. 

All of her features just the way he knew them, all perfectly arranged on her face. She was round and sharp at the same time, full lips and a pale complexion. She was winter, she was November, she was the chill in the air that Draco craved in the heat of July. 

She stepped towards him and he felt like he might shiver, like he had to manually control every single limb. He didn’t want to blink because missing a moment of her presence was unthinkable. 

She was his entirely. She didn’t speak but he heard her voice whispering in his ear, affirmations, pained sighs of “you know we belong to each other.”

He stepped towards her. She stayed where she was. 

His eyes flicked from her face over her dress, her small shoulders, down to her shoes. Still firmly strapped to her feet. She wasn't moving, no motion at all. His eyes returned to her face and caught her gaze. 

But something was wrong now. He could see it writ large on all of her features, the features he had taken his time to memorize over the years. 

She was stony, silent, as if he was a stranger passing her on the street - no, as if he was the sidewalk she was walking on. 

“Pansy,” he said, hoping to somehow summon her back into her body.

She blinked, but when she opened her eyes again they still looked the same. She adjusted her shoulders, pushing them back slightly, and blinked a couple more times. 

“Draco,” she allowed, and there was something different about her voice. It was deeper and her cadence was slightly slower. Maybe speaking French for a month and a half changed it. Or maybe it was different because something was tangibly different between them right now.

But she had never been talkative, she had never been open. She wasn't like Iris - you could never tell what she was feeling unless she said so. Draco had gotten used to looking at Iris and knowing exactly what she was feeling. He just had to snap back into Pansy. 

He stepped forward until he was standing over her. She looked up at him, tilting her chin obediently, but her heels stayed on her feet and her hands stayed at her sides. Draco’s bare chest was cold in the stagnant air of the kitchen. 

“I missed you,” he whispered, his voice low, in that tone he could always find with Pansy. It had been made for her. 

“I know,” she said. Whatever the fuck that meant. 

It was possible that this was one of those moments where she wanted him to say something, some specific thing. He couldn’t think of what that would be, though. He hadn’t been the one who fucked off for a month and a half. She should be saying something to him. 

He took a breath and she watched him. As close to permission as he supposed he would get. He moved his hand soundlessly through the air, curving it possessively around her waist and dragging her a little closer to him. 

Her eyes dropped from his at once. 

“Draco,” she said, sounding almost as if she was scolding him - as if he was a child who didn’t understand a very obvious concept. 

He had imagined their reunion a thousand times in a thousand different ways. He imagined them fucking immediately or her wanting to talk for a while. He even imagined them fighting - they did that sometimes after they hadn’t seen each other. 

Not this, though. A thousand different scenarios and not one had included the possibility that Pansy might not want him to touch her. That she might be in his apartment for something else. 

He let go of her waist and took a step back, regretting not drinking more wine. She looked back up to him - her eyes weren’t empty now, but they weren’t exactly filled with lust. The way she looked unnerved him. 

The thought that she might be here to break things off with him washed over his body like a winter storm, freezing his insides. He felt like his chest was compressing and took a shallow breath to try to combat in. 

He was flying in a storm now, but not in the adrenaline-pumping freefall he was used to. It was like it was raining so hard that he couldn’t see two feet in front of him. Like the winds had rocked him around so much that he wasn't sure which way was up.

“What the fuck,” he whispered. 

She bit her lip.

“Six weeks without you,” Draco reminded her quietly, “six weeks, and you won’t even let me touch you?”

She released her bottom lip, looking a bit pained. He couldn’t tell whether it was a good thing or not. She looked past him, into the living room with its great windows and out onto the street below. As if something in the pavement could give her a good answer. 

“It’s not that,” she offered. 

“It’s exactly that,” Draco said. “What’s going on?”

When she looked at him again he felt an odd sense of annoyance. All the things she had done to him since summer - the things he had ignored in favor of her lips, her nails, her promise that she was always his - floated back into his mind, creating little ripples in his conscience. 

“I need to speak to you,” she said. 

“That’s all you’re here to do?”

She had the good sense to look apologetic. “I don’t have time, otherwise… I can’t.”

“I suppose it’s out of the question that you make time for me,” Draco hissed. 

She had promised to write to him and she hadn’t. She promised that she would see him as soon as she got home and now he was just a stop on her way to some dinner. And she had gone in the first place, that was bad enough, she had gone with Blaise. 

But when he looked at her with narrowed eyes, he found that her eyes were narrowed right back. He hadn’t said anything out of line, not really. She should be feeling chided now, but instead she was focused on something below his neck. 

She reached out her arm, gesturing towards his chest. 

“Who gave you those?” She demanded. 

Draco looked down, following her hand. Faded marks below his collarbone. Love bites. He was surprised Pansy had noticed them - he would’ve covered them up with a glamour if he thought that she would see. 

He considered telling her that Iris had. It would make her angry, and the vindictive part of him wanted her to be angry too - wanted her to know that he could hurt her right back and he wouldn’t think anything of it. 

But he couldn’t risk it. If she walked out right now she might never walk back in, and that was simply not an option. Draco had to find a way to make her feel guilty without making her angry. 

“Nobody,” he spoke without emotion. “Don’t remember her name.”

Pansy looked back up at him. 

“Sure you don’t,” she muttered. 

There - there was some vindictive part of her too. Draco felt a strange sense of relief watching her face flicker with jealousy. She still cared, then. She wasn't just here to break up with him. 

“I don’t lie, Pansy,” he said, “not to you.”

He didn’t usually lie to her but he had the sense that this conversation was a make or break moment and he would do anything he could to keep her with him. Losing her was unthinkable - he would compromise anything, even his longest kept values, to make sure it didn’t happen.

“Why are you here, then?” He asked carefully. 

She exhaled, a sort of sigh. Her shoulders relaxed. With anyone else, it was a sign that they were comfortable with you, allowing themselves to be vulnerable. When Pansy relaxed her shoulders it was a warning that she was about to say something he didn’t want to hear. 

It was strange. She was the opposite of most normal things. Perhaps that’s why Draco hated most normal things - she had inadvertently been training him to since they were eleven. 

“I need you to promise me that you won’t say anything about us to anyone,” she said. 

“Why would I?”

She shook her head. “I just need you to promise.”

“Yeah, I promise.” If this was all she wanted, it was a lot less complicated than Draco thought. There was no reason for him to go spreading that shit around, not when it meant him risking losing Pansy forever. Complete secrecy had been part of their agreement since it had first begun. 

He hadn’t told anybody about them for five years and wondered why she thought he might now. Perhaps Paris had fucked up her brain in the same way it fucked up her voice. She did speak slower now. 

“Not just you,” she said. 

Draco raised his eyebrows, letting her continue. 

“The girl who saw us. Back in June - the girl from work. Does she know?”

Draco’s brow furrowed slightly. She was talking about Iris, the time that she had all but walked in on them. The first time he had seen her blush that deeply, but that didn’t matter and he shouldn’t be thinking like that. 

“I expect she knows something, seeing as I was in nothing but a towel.”

“Has she ever said anything about it?”

“We don’t speak much.” That was true enough if you were only taking the last three days as examples. 

“Make sure she never says a word about it. Promise me you will.”

“Pansy, this is -”

“Promise me you will.”

“Yeah. I will. Could you tell me what the fuck this is all about?”

She smoothed down her hair, her eyes once again trailing to the windows behind him. Draco thought she was looking at the lights outside again, but realized it was more likely that she was looking at her own reflection. 

Fine, then. She looked perfect. If he looked like that he would be looking for his own reflection everywhere he went. 

“It’s just… things are serious with Blaise.”

He was back in the rain and lightning exploded right in front of him. One inch closer and it would’ve split his broom in half, one inch closer and he would’ve been in a tailspin now, hurtling towards the ground below. 

And who said he wasn't falling?

“I thought you were always mine,” he remarked. There was no emotion in his voice but it might as well have broken, he might as well be sobbing and breaking things. He never said shit like that to her, never ever. 

She straightened again. They looked at each other like strangers, the same way they would if they inadvertently passed each other on the street. 

“You know I am,” she said, but her tone was as flat as his had been. 

He had known that once, known it more easily and more readily than he had known anything else. Her presence in his life had been as commonplace as that of his family, that of his wand, that of the signet ring on his left pointer finger. 

Now they could say the most brazen things to each other in the same way they would read off lists of ingredients. They had come a very long way. When Draco had wanted nothing more than to die where he stood she had been the thing that kept him from doing it. Her body in his bed had been an anchor to the world. He adopted her heartbeat to remind himself that he could live, too. 

But the girl in front of him had shorter hair and darker eyelashes. She couldn’t stay with him now. He wouldn’t feel her body against his tonight and probably wouldn’t for a long time. Her voice was alien to him and he didn’t understand some of her movements. 

He would do anything to be back in her world but he didn’t know where to start. He wished she would just tell him what to say next so that he could say the right thing. 

They belonged to each other, two little objects, but now they were falling apart. Seams splitting, colors fading. Draco would keep her until she turned to dust, or at least he would try to. 

He had a toy dragon when he was a kid, a gift from his mother, that he had slept with every night until both its eyes fell out and its wings drooped and it took on an ugly brown shade. Stuffing poured out of its empty sockets every night but he refused to let it go. 

Eventually, Lucius had taken it and destroyed it. Draco was too old for that now and he shouldn’t be getting so attached to something with no meaning, no purpose, no grand monetary value behind it. 

Pansy never had any toys. 

“It has to be like this for a while,” she said. Daring him to challenge her. Daring him to show weakness. Daring him to expose all the places she had broken him with her absences and curt words and unfulfilled promises. And fucking Blaise. She was probably fucking Blaise. 

“It’s already been a while,” Draco growled. “Too long. I can’t go on like this.” His voice was no longer blank and he didn’t care. The time for carefully crafted conversation was long over. 

He was showing her his wounds and he could see on her face how much she hated it. Vulnerability had always made her uncomfortable. Weakness was worse, especially from him. He was unnerving her now, and it rushed through his veins, icy. 

It was almost satisfying, watching her lose control of the conversation. But there was an edge to his pleasure, the wild fear that this would be it, that she would leave. 

“You’ve certainly found a way to occupy yourself in the meantime,” she said back, her eyes falling once again to the faded love bites below his collarbone. She was no longer jealous - she just wanted to remind him that he had ostensibly fucked up too. 

“It’s nothing,” he said, stepping towards her. She didn’t drop his eyes. Dead silence pervaded the air as they stared at each other. Her eyes were ominous, a warning he knew he would ignore. 

The thing taking shape between them now was edged with malice, deeply sinister. They were no longer eleven, they were no longer sixteen, they were no longer nineteen. 

If they carried on now it would be something of a death sentence. How could he live with himself if he chose her after this? If he chose to keep being with her, knowing what she was doing to him?

How could he live with himself if he didn’t?

She was letting him closer to her now. His hand returned to her waist. He didn’t bother being gentle, just pulled her to him in a sort of rough acknowledgement that he was still hers. Her hands stayed by her side but she let him hold her like that. 

It wasn't intimacy. It was shackles around the two of them, manacles forever bonding them even when they both hated it. 

He leaned into her ear. 

“You know I was thinking of you,” he whispered, referring to her comment on the marks on his chest. “They’re just distractions. She’s nothing to me.”

Pansy turned her face toward him. Their cheeks brushed. Their eyes met, so close that her pupils were half of his field of vision. They were blown, big, fuck, and he was sure his were too. 

“ _She…_ just one girl?”

“No,” Draco lied. Pansy wouldn’t want him fucking anyone other than her more than once. 

“Is she pretty?” She asked. He wondered if she believed him. She did. She had a way of believing what she wanted - everyone did.

“She’s nothing,” Draco repeated. 

Pansy kissed him. She pressed her body into his so that he could feel her inhale against his bare chest. Her arms looped up his body, hands splayed on his back. 

He brought his other hand, the hand not around her waist, to the back of her neck and tangled it tightly in her hair. The same way Iris always did to him. He wished he could turn off his thoughts. 

Pansy broke apart from him and inhaled sharply, the air finding its way back into her lungs. 

She blinked a couple times in quick succession and he knew then that she wouldn’t stay. All his convincing hadn’t been enough. 

If he had been flying in the rain he was on the ground now. Walking his wet broom back to the changing rooms. Soaked clothes, soaked hair. Fucking cold.

“I’ll come see you next week,” she murmured, still staring at him. 

He wondered whether that was a real promise or a fake one. Hard to tell with her these days. He would take what he could get, though. 

“I missed you,” she added, and he thought that that might mean that she really was coming over next week. She was quiet and honest now. As close to vulnerable as she could get. He couldn’t show her any weakness in return, though, he knew that. She wouldn’t like it. 

He let her go. His hands left her waist and what felt like a half-second later the door shut behind her. 

The sky was black. He couldn’t see a single star. He stared at his reflection in the windows for a while and wondered what he looked like to Pansy. Then he wondered what he looked like to Iris. Then he wondered whether they looked at him differently. Then he shut off his brain because he wasn't supposed to be thinking about Iris now that Pansy was home. 

His hair was messy. He could see the Dark Mark clearly even in his slightly blurred reflection. 

If the rest of the world looked at him that’s all they would see. 

He lay back in bed and considered getting off, but he didn’t trust his thoughts and his eyes were closing by themselves. It wasn't that late but he had stayed up the night before and there was something about Pansy that exhausted him. 

Usually in a good way, but tonight he felt a strange sense of hopelessness, like someone had spilled black ink on his chest and it was slowly spreading its way through his veins. 

Weakness. He shouldn’t be weak. He had learned long ago how to hide tears - how to hide all emotion, really. He had all but killed his headmaster. He had tortured his father’s old friends during the war, stood by as his mother screamed and writhed on the floor.

He shouldn’t be weak anymore. 

It was fair enough for Pansy to hate it. She had dealt with him enough in sixth year to last a lifetime. 

His body was heavy and instead of changing into sleeping clothes he just took everything off and let his bare body lie against the cold silk sheets. He had such nice things here. Things a war criminal didn’t deserve. 

He wondered why the judge hadn’t ordered more of the Malfoy fortune to be taken away. Perhaps Lucius had somehow paid him off. Maybe he felt bad for Draco and Narcissa. Small mercies. 

If he didn’t have his money, would Pansy still want him?

If he showed weakness to Iris, what would she do?

Probably something he would hate. She would probably turn into him so that he could feel her against him, the warmth of her leg and the feeling of her cheek against that shallow bit of his chest between his neck and his shoulder. 

She would probably want to stay with him, stay the night, sleep in his bed beside him. He hadn’t let anybody do that, not since Hogwarts, not since Pansy. He wouldn’t want her to stay. He wouldn’t want to speak to her in the morning. 

_You won’t send me away this time?_ That’s what she had said at the Siren. What a stupid fucking thing to say. Of course he would. He would always send her away, he would never want her. Nevermind the feeling of her lips below his collarbones, nevermind the way she spoke to him sometimes. 

Spoke softly. Like she was trying to be gentle. It was ridiculous - he was the antithesis of gentle. 

She wanted him to keep her. Keep her with him, even after they were through fucking. He wouldn’t do that. 

He fell asleep for a couple of hours before his eyes shot open in the middle of the night. He was hot, sweating, the sheets no longer cold. His nose was stinging the way it used to do before he cried back at school. 

A nightmare. He should’ve anticipated it with the way he’d been thinking about the war today. But he never really saw them coming anymore. He didn’t remember what it was about and didn’t try to. He was happy to let it escape to somewhere deep in his subconscious and haunt him from there. 

His heartbeat was too fast to go back to sleep. 

He remembered something that had happened Monday after work. He had stayed back for a couple of minutes to finish taking notes on the properties of their preliminary brew or something similarly mundane.

When he walked out into the atrium, Iris was standing off to the side with Tracey Davis. They were locked in a conversation that sounded far too serious for them to be having in a common space. He wasn't sure they even noticed them.

As he stood in front of the lift, he heard Iris say “you’ll be alright, Trace. You know that.”

He turned over, rolling onto the other side of his bed where the bedding was still cold. He grabbed a pillow and rested his cheek on it. 

_You’ll be alright. You know that._

His heartbeat calmed a little bit and he stared out the window lazily for a couple minutes before his eyelids felt heavy again. Then he slept.


	25. Stay

_IRIS_

“Surprised you actually came in,” she said, casually enough that she thought he might not pick up on the fact that she had been thinking about saying it since the day before. Whether or not it was a good thing, Iris was getting better at disguising her emotions, her true intent. 

It was the first real thing she had said to Draco in a while. She had been wondering whether he would bother coming in this morning, Thursday, when he had left so unceremoniously on Wednesday. But she had saved up the comment just in case. 

It was the type of passing thing that might bait him into conversation with her. Iris would even prefer a stilted argument to the absolute silence he had been giving her since Monday. It was almost enough to make her wonder whether she had done something wrong at the Siren on Friday. 

But she knew, realistically she knew that that wasn't true. That had been the best she had ever had it, so good that she felt like her body might be breaking in half. There was no way it wasn't the same for him.

Her words were enough to make Draco look up at her. She let a shadow pass across her brow as she took him in. He shot her a look of pure contempt, absolutely venomous. She blinked and when she opened her eyes again he was still looking at her. 

He looked like he hadn’t slept at all the night before. His eyes were ringed with red, his hair messier than usual - and not in the purposeful way he did sometimes. 

He flipped her off in response, which did nothing to stall the want that had been pooling in her body since she had left on Friday night. His fingers were slender but his hands were broad and had a sort of lean strength to them. His rings made them look even more stately. 

“Careful I won’t tell Granger,” Iris said, raising the stakes of their one-sided conversation. Hopefully enough that he would grant her an actual response. 

“No danger of that,” he muttered as he walked across the room, shedding his coat and casting the odd little charm he knew that disappeared clothes into some strange dimension. He had done it on Iris’s tops enough times for her to recognize it. 

“No?” She asked, injecting as much derision as she could into her tone. She really was baiting him now. Hermione already knew about him leaving early, and Iris had done the opposite of threatening his job - she had defended him. 

“You wouldn’t want me fired,” he said, turning to look at her. 

Her heart was racing a little bit. He was talking to her again, even if it was just throwaway comments. Did this mean things were back to normal?

“You overestimate the effect you have on me,” Iris said. In truth he probably underestimated it. 

He didn’t say anything but didn’t turn away either. She wasn't going to be the one to break eye contact with him. His eyes had a little bit of red in them, as if the blood vessels behind his pupils were strained. 

She thought there might be a little less venom in them, too. Hating her was a reflex for him - perhaps it took him a second to remember that he didn’t exactly hate her at all. That’s how it had been for Iris a couple of weeks ago. 

Now, though, her reflex was to feel his skin on hers. Hating him was no longer on her mind, unless she thought the hatred between them could get her what she wanted. She wondered why he hadn’t slept much last night.

“I don’t,” he said after a while. Good, then. He wanted to have an effect on her. 

“You do,” she returned easily. 

His eyes narrowed. Taking it as a challenge, no doubt. 

“Did you finish the Felix experiment?” He asked. She noticed that he was making no move to gather his own ingredients or ready his own cauldron and flirted with the possibility that he wanted to work alongside her today. It was a stupid thought, and if he was to do that it would only be to prove his own ends. 

She still wanted him to, though. 

“I finished it. Sent up the results.” She replied. “No thanks to you.”

Draco scoffed. “Huge fucking thanks to me, actually. In case you forgot, all of our notes are in my handwriting.”

“How could I forget when nobody besides you can read them?”

“Not my fault that Ilvermorny didn’t teach you how to read cursive.”

“According to you, nothing is your fault. So excuse me if I take your words with a grain of salt,” Iris said, and to her surprise Draco smiled in response. It was more of a sneer, really, but his vindictiveness was better than his silence. 

“You’re proving my point, Iris. Not even half past nine and I’m already affecting you.”

“Hardly.” 

He rarely used her name anymore. He knew what it did to her, so the fact that he was using it now further fueled Iris’s suspicion that he wanted to prove himself right - prove that he could affect her. 

He made his way across the room, grabbing the parchment that Shacklebolt had sent down detailing their next assignment. His brow furrowed slightly as he read it. She liked how he looked when he was focused. It was as if all his cruelty dissipated, turning into fixation on the words in front of him, the problem that he needed to solve. 

She supposed he took out his frustration with the world on his work. He took out his frustration on her, too, but he didn’t look focused when he did it, not always. He adopted a different look sometimes, one that she couldn’t put down in words and didn’t want to dwell on when he was right in front of her. 

He looked up at her when he was finished reading. 

“Communication devices?” He asked, referring to the brief they had received from the Minister. 

Iris raised her wand, levitating two compact mirrors into the air beside her. She didn’t trust herself touching them yet, not when she knew where they had come from. 

The Aurors had raided an old Death Eater stronghold over the weekend and had recovered the two mirrors, which they thought could be some sort of two-way communication method. Shacklebolt had sent them down to Iris and Draco because they were steeped in love magic. 

It was their job to decode the protective barriers around them, corrode the wards until they could figure out what their function might have been, and determine whether or not the Ministry could use them to their own effects. 

“Yeah,” Iris confirmed, watching Draco as he took in the mirrors. 

They were no bigger than her hand. They looked completely pristine, but when she tried to communicate from one to the other, her reflection disappeared. There was some type of defensive magic on them that they had to break before they could figure out how exactly they worked.

One was a pale, pearly pink, the other untarnished silver. They had strange carvings on the back of them, flowers that sort of looked human in shape. Pearls were inset in the metal on the inside, framing the mirror itself. 

Iris dropped them back on the table, releasing her levitating charm. Draco stared at them for a second more, then looked back up at her. Apparently not addressing the fact that he was at her desk instead of his. She wasn't going to be the one to mention it. 

“Do you know anything about them?” Iris asked, trying to keep her tone neutral, almost bored. 

Draco’s eyes hardened. “Why would I?”

Iris's eyes flicked to his left forearm. It was covered by the fabric of his shirt, but she knew the Mark was swimming beneath it. He jerked his arm away from her field of vision and she looked back up at him, knitting her brows. 

“I see,” he said quietly. There was an edge to his voice that Iris didn’t recognize and she sensed that she had made a mistake in referring to his past, even just with her eyes. They squared off for a second - Iris unsure, Draco contemptuous. 

“What do you think I was doing during the war?” He asked, his voice hard with malice.

Iris blanched a little bit. She didn’t mean to bring up the war, not exactly. She didn’t know much about it as to how it related to him - nothing besides the headlines that had been in the American newspapers. She was a teenager then, eighteen, invincible and unaffected. Sadie had just met Simon and she had just broken up with Nick. 

Draco had been on trial for war crimes. 

Iris shook her head. “I’m not trying to accuse you of anything,” she said. “Just thought you might have seen them.”

“Right,” he murmured, looking past her for a second. His eyes fixated on something on the wall behind her. She wondered if he was looking at something in particular or whether he had just picked a piece of marble to stare at. 

He looked back down and spoke in an emotionless drawl. “It might interest you to know that I’ve never been in a Death Eater stronghold, actually, not besides my own childhood home. There was no reason for me to leave the Manor when the Dark Lord was already there.”

Iris blinked. She wasn't sure whether she was interested to know that. She hadn’t known it before. She knew enough to be quiet now, though. Things were suddenly serious. 

“You think I was Voldemort’s right hand man, is that it?”

Iris shook her head silently. 

“Yeah, right. I wasn't. Never seen these in my life.”

“Okay,” Iris said, wondering whether he would go back to his desk now. There was no reason for him to stay next to her, especially not when he was clearly annoyed at her. 

Instead, he took out his wand and pointed it at the mirrors, his brows knitting his face back into focus. His lips formed a hard line. He was casting nonverbals at them. Iris would usually ask him to do it out loud for the sake of their collaborative notes, but she felt cowed and didn’t want to reengage in a conversation that she had already fucked up once. 

He lowered his wand after a couple of minutes. 

“No defense wards that I know of,” he said coolly, then looked up at her. He raised his eyebrows as he caught her eyes. “What, have you just been watching me for two minutes straight?”

Iris bristled. “Do you have to do everything nonverbally?”

He raised his eyebrows. “You like the sound of my voice that much?”

It was strange how easily he could clip between hard anger and teasing provocation. But Iris supposed that him trying to have an affect on her was just another outlet for his anger - a way to prove himself better than her. 

She was no longer convinced she hated him - no, she knew she wanted him, sexually at least, as easily as she knew how to breathe. But there was no way they were fucking today just so that he could win one of his made-up arguments. She had enough self-respect to make sure that everything that happened between them happened on her terms as much as his. 

Now, she just rolled her eyes, turning to the mirrors herself. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Draco murmured in her periphery. 

If none of the ward-breaking spells that Draco knew had done the trick, she doubted any ward breaking spell would. Even though she hadn’t heard him cast the charms out loud, she trusted that he knew what he was doing. 

So the wards must somehow be intertwined with the love magic - perhaps charmed so that only two people could access the communication properties between them? There was a start. Now she just needed to figure out how to either pose as one of those people or break the charm entirely. 

She considered asking Draco whether he knew of any two people in Voldemort’s camp that would have kept these devices. She didn’t think many of them would understand love magic very deeply. 

But mentioning the war again might piss him off enough to fuck off entirely. 

And besides, when she looked up at him he was already staring at her, his gaze disarming. Her hands froze on the sides of the desk. He chuckled. 

“I don’t even have to speak for you to stop what you’re doing around me.”

Iris chose to ignore this. It really was strange seeing him jump between what seemed like deep hurt and anger back to the light, cruel games he always played with her. She chose to ignore it. 

“Would it be dangerous to touch?” Iris asked, then blushed when she realized there was another possible connotation to her words. “The mirror, I mean,” she added quickly. 

Draco smirked. “Dangerous? I’m not sure. Depends on what you want to happen,” he said. She wasn't sure if he was referring to the mirrors or something else entirely. 

“I don’t want anything in particular to happen,” she said. 

“You’ve never been a very good liar,” Draco said, moving closer to her with a casual lean that seemed so mindless that she wondered whether he could really be unaware of what he was doing. But he had to know.

“Fine,” Iris said, slightly exasperated. Fighting off his fake advances was draining, especially because she wished that they weren’t fake at all. “What’s the worst that could happen if I touched one?”

Draco hummed, making a show of thinking about it. “You could get attached,” he offered. 

“Attached? Like, some sort of love magic bonding me to it?”

“Call it what you want,” he shrugged. “You wouldn’t want to be separated from it. You would want it with you all the time. You would spend all your time looking at it, even when you were with other people - your friends.” Iris had the obvious sense that his words had a subtext beneath them, but she didn’t want to pick their meaning apart.

“So I shouldn’t touch it,” she said. 

“Unless you think you can keep your baser impulses under control.”

“Is there a way to make it safe? So that we don’t have to risk it?”

“What exactly do you think we’re _risking_ here, Iris?”

He was no longer talking about the mirrors but she didn’t have the brainpower to wrap her head around all of his hidden meanings and keep up with the pace of the conversation at the same time. It was easier just to pretend that he didn’t mean anything besides the obvious - it was self-preservation.

“You just said it - I could get attached. Or whatever. We could get attached if we touch it.”

“You don’t think you’re already attached?” He smirked, pushing off from the table. 

He was much closer to her than he had been when he had first walked over. He had a way of doing that, of moving so deliberately, so slowly that you didn’t notice what he was doing until it was too late. He would be good at poisoning people, maybe. She was very bad at knowing what to do with it all. 

“I haven’t touched the mirrors,” she managed.

Draco laughed lightly, managing to do it without smiling, which was an odd combination of ominous and alluring. 

“We’re not talking about the mirrors, though, are we?” He asked, his voice lower. He pulled his arm up to the table and his sleeve brushed hers. The slightest contact between them sent her heart racing. He never touched her without purpose. 

But his purpose now was just to prove a point. She didn’t want to feed into it. Or at least she knew that she shouldn’t want to. 

“I was,” she said. 

“Were you?” Draco answered. “I’ll ask again, then, so you better understand my question.” He leaned slightly closer to her, forcing her to incline her neck to meet his eyes. She hated when he did this - used his height as some sort of dominating maneuver. 

She didn’t hate it at all, not if he followed through.

“You don’t think you’re already attached?” He asked. This time she knew he was talking about himself. 

She ripped her eyes away from his, grabbing one of the mirrors off the table. Perhaps she should’ve considered this move better, but she was leading with emotion now. Not great for the workplace. 

She held the compact in her open hand, returning her eyes to Draco’s. 

“No,” she said, “I don’t think I am.”

“That’s funny,” he murmured, regarding the mirror in her hand, “I pegged you for the pink mirror, not the silver one.”

Iris had actually thought that herself when she first saw them. The silver one was pretty in the way that antique things were, in the same way Draco’s rings were. A stately representation of generational wealth. The pearly mirror was more interesting. Its origin was more mysterious in Iris’s head.

“Just proving a point,” she said, setting the mirrors back down on the table and turning pointedly back towards the desk. She didn’t feel attached to it, which she hoped meant that it had been alright to touch. She kept her eyes trained on the compacts, commanding herself to think of some test or charm or idea to try breaking the love magic wards. 

Instead, she heard Draco’s voice in her ear. “Consider it proven,” he drawled. 

This is what she meant about him moving stealthily - his body was behind her now, his clothes brushing against hers, his breath on the shell of her ear. He had managed to get this close to her without her even noticing. 

Was it something wrong with her? Was she the type of person who wouldn’t notice that somebody was robbing her apartment until she woke up and all her things were missing? Or was it something wrong with Draco - was he the type of person who could rob a whole house and not wake a single person up?

Likely some combination of the two. Always a combination of something whenever they were together. Usually nothing good - alcohol and purple lights, a couch and bleeding hands, mirrored doors and a tricky charm. 

Only it was good, actually. It was better than good. 

She just about managed not to jump after finding him hovering behind her, but she still inhaled sharply and heard him chuckle from behind her, a quick huff of air. 

She turned back to the mirrors again. How would you charm something to make sure only two people could access it? And how could that charm be related to love magic?

Draco’s hand deliberately brushed her arm as he reached down to grab one of the mirrors and hold it up to the light of the window. He was still standing just behind her. He had grabbed the pink one. If that meant anything. 

“What do you think?” He whispered, turning back towards her and once again letting his words flow straight from his mouth into her ear. 

“I think it’s some sort of love charm. Whether or not it’s specific to two people, I’m not sure.”

Draco hummed in acknowledgement, though she supposed the real function of the noise was so that he could send more little vibrations through her ear canal. 

Iris sighed, making a show of pretending not to care about Draco’s obvious provocations, and took out a piece of parchment to make notes on. _Wards imbibed with love magic_ , she scribbled down.

Draco’s brain seemed to recall that he too was supposed to be working, and he conjured his own bit of parchment to write on. Mercifully, he extracted himself from his position right behind her ear and moved beside her instead, setting down the paper on her desk. 

He left her alone for about five minutes before he started up bothering her again. It was just little touches at first, brushes of hands and arms that could be accidental if Iris didn’t know how Draco weighed every little movement his body made. 

She reminded herself firmly that all of this was just so that he could prove something to himself - his dominance, his control over her, his power to _affect_ her. She wouldn’t give in to it. Until she knew it was real, she wouldn’t make a fool of herself going after him. She wouldn’t let him have an effect on her before she knew that she could have an effect on him, too. 

The day went on. The late autumn sun rose higher in the sky outside the window then began to fall. Iris continued to inspect the mirrors, finishing a page of notes about possibilities for the wards. She wandered over to the ingredient shelf to see if any of the jars and vials would jog her memory or make her think of a potion she could make to break the wards. 

She didn’t see how the objects could be charmed to only let two people use them. That was a complicated privacy charm that Iris had no idea how to begin to unravel, but it had nothing to do with love magic. 

Whatever was protecting the mirrors from outside interference had a lot to do with love magic, obviously. 

Draco didn’t leave her desk even when she wasn't there. She wouldn’t complain about it - she had been hoping they would start working together again, it was easier for them both - but his behavior now was opposite of the way he had been acting for the past three days straight and she didn’t understand it. 

When she came back to the desk, he was leaning against it, staring at one of the inlaid pearls on the inside of the silver mirror. He still looked like he hadn’t slept at all last night. It crossed her mind that he might have been with another girl. 

But his sleeplessness wasn't the hazy come down after a long night together. It was hard and unforgiving, the type of insomnia that sparked nerves against each other so that your whole body felt achy and heavy. 

Maybe he had just stayed up drinking, but he had left early yesterday. If Iris had to guess, he had been going home for something. And that thing had somehow kept him from sleeping or, at the least, sleeping very badly.

She returned to her spot, feeling Draco’s eyes resting lazily on the side of her face as she stared down at the mirrors. She felt like she was on the edge of figuring it out, or at least figuring out what she should do next, but now she was staring at a wall. 

Literally. The walls in the Love Chamber were admittedly beautiful, made up of marble and filled with beautifully painted portraits of lovers. But she had spent so much time looking at them that they could no longer distract her for long. 

She heard a rustling from beside her and glanced over to see that Draco had her notes in his hand and was reading them with raised eyebrows. 

“What are you doing?” She asked. 

“Reading,” he muttered back, sounding completely unbothered. But when he looked up at her he raised his eyebrows in the same way he did when he was challenging her in an argument. And both of them knew where their arguments led. 

“Reading _my_ notes.”

“Yes. I was under the impression,” he said, then leaned closer to her and lowered his voice a little bit, “that we were working together. Partners.”

It would’ve been almost comical if Iris didn’t feel her cheeks heating up slightly. His voice was a caricature of seduction, but he played the part so well that she couldn’t even distract herself with its predictability. 

He could make all the same moves that any other man would - casually touch her, whisper in her ear, lower his voice with a suggestive flair. But those things were different with him because he was not every other man. He wasn't attractive in the classic way they were. He would look out of place on the cover of an action movie or as the hero in a muggle comic book. 

But he was beautiful in a way they couldn’t dream of being. His eyes were so light they looked almost inhuman. He was angular, but not in the same way other men were, with their square jaws and muscular builds. His angles were sharp and hollow, a warning that touching him would cause you harm. 

His hands weren’t meaty. They were lean, manicured, as if he had never worked a day in his life. His clothes always looked like they had been fitted for his body that very morning. Tight on his waist. His hair was almost as pale as his skin. 

He would never pass as a hero. His eyes had a genuine hostility to them, a coldness. He had always been the villain and he would always be the villain to most people. Bitterness had lived in his skin for years. 

So it was different when he spoke in a low voice, when he regarded her with a lidded gaze. He was putting on no airs. His manipulation hadn’t been learned - it wasn't some misguided attempt to get girls. It was a part of him, a deep and terrible part of him that he would always use to get what he wanted. 

And now he wanted her. Or he wanted her to want him. How different were those things, really? One was a genuine emotion, and one was a cover for a genuine emotion, a way to push it aside. They both boiled down to the same thing. 

Iris wondered how much longer it would take him to realize it. She wasn't sure she could wait on him much longer, now that she knew. Knew she didn’t hate him. Something else entirely. She wanted him around her without having to ask, without having to play games. 

She could deal with him pushing her away, ignoring her, sending her biting insults. That was fine. He was not the type of person to deal with his emotions, not the type to even acknowledge them at all. She could give him time to try. 

But she wasn't sure how long. 

She realized it had been quite a while since either of them had spoken. He had said something and she had let the silence hang for a while instead of answering. Just thinking. 

His eyes were narrowed when she looked back up at him. It occurred to her that he probably thought he was ignoring her on purpose. He looked angry about it. Fine, then. She could affect him too. Even and perhaps most especially when he didn’t see it. 

She turned back to the mirrors, busying herself with opening them and staring at the carvings inside. She wasn't picking up on anything, but she didn’t want to feed into Draco’s anger, didn’t want to let him think that she cared. 

He put her notes down on the table and moved closer to her. No longer making any attempt to sneak up on her, to be quiet. He stood behind her and she heard his breath in her ear, a long exhale. 

She stiffened slightly. 

“I can’t read your notes?” He asked quietly, trying to provoke her. 

“You can do whatever you want,” she muttered, “I don’t care.”

“Whatever I want,” he repeated in the same low voice. She ignored him, focusing in on a specific pearl on the right side of the mirror that was a little different in color than the rest. Probably just an effect of age. 

Then she felt Draco on her neck. 

Pulling back in surprise, Iris dropped the mirror compact. It hid the desk and rattled to a stop as she glared at Draco with knitted brows. His presumptuousness had always surprised her, but now it was fringing on annoying. She wanted to see something in his eyes besides a robotic need for control. 

Truthfully, he _was_ affecting her. And she was afraid she might compromise her newly found self-respect if he kept it up. 

“You can’t do that,” she snapped. 

“What, have an effect on you?”

She was sure her exasperation was shining through every facet of her face. Her hands were clenched at her sides. He stared at her with raised eyebrows, spiteful in a sort of roguish way. 

His expression completely offset everything else about him. His eyes were teasing, but they were still shining with remnants of exhaustion. His body was stiff. There was something wrong with him, there had been since this morning. Maybe he was just acting like this to try to draw her attention away from it. 

She shook her head slightly. There was really no point in pretending like she hadn’t noticed, or at least there didn’t seem to be now that he had pushed her past casual annoyance and into the beginnings of real anger. 

“Were you planning on telling me why you ignored me for the last three days only to act like this now?” She demanded.

She thought he would answer immediately with some quip about her not being able to stand life without him, but instead his eyes hardened until they matched the rest of his body. No longer the slightest bit playful.

He cocked his head, staring at her. They did a lot of staring at each other. 

“Saw Pansy last night,” he said carefully. 

Iris felt her chest compress for a second. She was suddenly aware of her own heartbeat. 

So that was the reason he hadn’t slept well. He had been with her all night. She must’ve gotten back from Paris. Iris had stopped reading the _Daily Prophet’s_ gossip column last month, otherwise she might have known. The warning would’ve been nice. 

She supposed the reason he had an angry edge to him wasn't Pansy’s fault at all, but was rather Draco’s reaction to having to come into work and see Iris. Swapping Pansy’s elegant beauty for Iris’s messy ponytail and slightly wrinkled robes was probably quite a let down. 

She turned away from him, staring down at the mirrors. Her body felt like it had hardened, like she was growing an outer shell to keep him away from her. She needed to get her face back under control, make it like his, so when she looked back at him he wouldn’t be able to see that she was hurt. 

Was she hurt? It felt like hurt, whatever this feeling was. She had thought that things were different now and that Draco was just in denial - he would come around soon enough and she would be there. But maybe that wasn't true at all. 

“Oh,” she muttered, just because saying nothing was worse. She tried to sound casual but instead her voice came out kind of quiet. 

“You’re bitter,” Draco remarked after a second. 

Iris wasn't sure she was bitter, though. Bitterness implied that she had been subjected to unfair treatment, and Draco being with Pansy wasn't exactly unfair according to the terms of their agreement. The reason she was hurt now was more the fault of her own naivety than anything having to do with Draco. 

But there was a sort of ugly feeling in her stomach. She was so sure that something had changed between them after what happened at the Siren and now she just felt stupid. They had always had good sex, the only difference was that he had talked to her afterwards, and even then he had only given her a couple of lines. 

And then he had ignored her for three days in the run up to seeing Pansy. Probably because he didn’t want to dirty his image by associating with her right before he saw the girl he really wanted. 

She bit her lip and her brow creased. It occurred to her that that didn’t actually make sense. 

If he was so obsessed with keeping himself away from Iris for Pansy’s benefit, he wouldn’t be talking to her right now. He would be ignoring her, would have been ignoring her all day. 

But instead he had gone out of his way to provoke her. It made no sense. He made no sense. She would probably never understand him - that had been her real mistake, thinking that his brain worked like hers. That he would soon realize the things that she had, as if he was just slightly behind her on a shared timeline. 

They barely shared dimensions with how differently they functioned. 

But she couldn’t think why he wouldn’t distance himself from her even more when he had just had Pansy. Shouldn’t she keep him sated for at least a week?

She ignored Draco’s mistaken observation and glanced back at the clock. The work day was almost over and she was no closer to figuring out how to use the mirrors. 

“It looks like I do have an effect on you, then, if you care so much what I do with Pansy.” 

Iris closed her eyes. Conversing with him was sometimes just talking in circles. He was apt to repeat himself in marginally different ways until Iris gave him the answer he wanted. The answer he wanted now was that he did affect her, that she did care what he did. 

“I don’t care what you do,” she said instead. Her shoulders were hanging lower than normal and despite her efforts to disguise her face she was sure that he could take one look at her and tell that she did care, and quite a bit at that. 

She wished she was bitter, wished he was right about that, because the truth was that she was just sort of sad and that seemed even more pathetic. 

“Oh no?” He asked. He was speaking incredibly quietly, as if he was sharing some intimate secret with her. “So it wouldn’t interest you to know that nothing happened between us?”

Iris snapped her eyes to him at once. The truth was cruel but lying was worse. She would rather know about everything that had ever happened between him and Pansy than pretend like nothing had. 

“That’s a lie,” she said, her voice hard.

“No. I don’t lie, Iris.”

They stared at each other again, but this time it was Iris desperately trying to figure Draco out. She tried to think of a time he had lied to her. There had to be one - it felt like there should be. But the more she thought about it the more it dawned on her that she wasn't sure he had ever lied to her. Most times he was probably too honest. 

It still sounded impossible, though, that nothing would have happened between him and Pansy on the first night they had seen each other in two months. 

“So you remained celibate for five days and then didn’t fuck her?” Iris asked. It was crude and she didn’t care.

If Draco was annoyed by her words he didn’t show it. He bowed his head slightly so that his face was closer to hers. Their bodies were already together - he had been bothering her with brushed sleeves all day. 

“Maybe I don’t want Pansy anymore. Maybe I just want you,” he said. 

If he was lying he was putting on one hell of a show. She should probably be trying to fight him right now, but the possibility that Draco had somehow rejected Pansy was quickly dissipating the edge in her stomach. If he was doing this on purpose, which he definitely was, he was doing it well. 

Would it be so hard to believe that he and Pansy were through? Surely nobody could abide all the shit they had done to each other, their long absences in each other’s lives. 

He hadn’t taken his rings off today because they weren’t brewing. She stared at them around his fingers while his hand rested on the table, then slowly brought her eyes back to his face. 

He looked almost expectant. It was possible that Iris was just placing the emotions she wanted him to feel on the blank canvas of his face. But it’s hard to deny your eyes, even when they play tricks on your brain. 

She took him in and thought once again that he was the picture of a villain. He had that sharp, hollow look. Like a broken bottle. She’d walk all over him barefoot, pick him up without gloves. He could cut her hands open and she would be thankful that she even found his broken pieces in the first place. 

The clock rang out the end of the day. The sun was setting earlier now, and it had already begun the last leg of its descent. Soon it would turn a bright gold, then orange like it had been in his room that time. 

“Come back to mine, Iris,” he said, reading her mind. 

If he was using her name as a manipulation tactic it was working. She hoped he was just using it because he was thinking of her. 

“Alright,” she said after a second. It felt like giving in to something you know you aren’t supposed to. The momentary relief, the high you’re always chasing getting one step closer. 

Later, when he inevitably kicked her out, she would probably stare at her ceiling and wish she had set him straight. 

He looked a bit smug that she agreed. She sighed, watching him believe that he had a huge effect on her. He wasn't wrong, not exactly, not at all. 

But as they walked out into the hallway, Iris smiled to herself, too. There was a time not long ago where he wouldn’t even dream of touching her after seeing Pansy. And now he was apparently done with her. 

She couldn’t recall a time he had lied to her and began to allow herself to consider the possibility that he was telling the truth. Maybe he didn’t fuck Pansy. Maybe he really did want Iris and he was figuring it out. 

Draco liked to pretend that he was unaffected. By Iris or by anyone else. She grabbed his arm as they walked outside the Ministry building, preparing herself for the nasty pit in her stomach that came with side-alonging. 

The reason she was here now was not because Draco had somehow enticed her. It was because she had somehow enticed him. He could put on whatever airs he wanted, it didn’t matter, not to her. She knew the truth.

They walked by the old woman at the front desk, waited in the golden elevator, passed through Draco’s wards and into his apartment beyond. It was cleaner this time. It looked like nobody had ever lived in it besides an empty wine glass on the table. 

Not two. Just one. So he had been alone, then. They didn’t drink together. They didn’t fuck.

He didn’t bother undressing her. He charmed both their clothes away with a quick nonverbal then tossed his wand aside. It was usually sort of jarring, watching herself go from having robes on to being completely naked. 

But this time she had seen it coming, so as he pulled out his wand she pressed her body against his. It felt almost intimate, or at least like they knew what they were doing. His skin was usually cold but when his shirt disappeared his chest was warm against hers. 

He put his hands under her thighs and she knew what that meant too, so she pulled herself up slightly and let him wrap her legs around his waist. 

He robbed her mouth of air with his kisses, punishing her for some crime she had never committed, and she whined openly into his mouth whenever he bit at her lip. There was a time when she would try to disguise the little noises she was so prone to, but it didn’t matter anymore. 

He answered her too, now, little exhales, the occasional keen. Sometimes he said her name, whispered it against her skin with a deadly flair, as though he was desperate to get it out of his mouth. 

She couldn’t explain what it felt like when he did that, not to anybody, not ever. She was a collection of atoms and they all aligned when he spoke to her, as if he was commanding them. 

Her devotion to him in those moments was almost scary. When he was making her feel like that he could say anything and she would agree. She would do anything. Hurt herself, hurt him. Anything. She was afraid that one day he would ask, ask for something she would regret giving later. 

But she didn’t regret much with him anymore - not sexually, at least. 

He put her down on his bed so that she was sitting on the side, her legs dangling beneath her. He towered over her with her jaw firmly in his grip and pulled her in to kiss after hungry kiss. She could only pull away when he let her, couldn’t turn her head even if she wanted to. 

She stared up at him with wide eyes, arching her back slightly as he moved his lips to her neck. She considered pushing him lower but she didn’t want to stop him, didn’t want to pull either of them out of this moment. She could cast a glamour later and be done with it. 

She would never be done with it. That was just wishful thinking. 

He pushed her slightly and she allowed herself to fall back onto his mattress before he was on the bed too, his arms around her back pulling her back upright so that she was on top of his body.

Skin on skin. She straddled him, staring at his chest, his stomach. Lying on his back made his skin sink slightly so that she could see his hips jutting out from his body. She placed her hands on them, feeling the bone beneath his thin layer of skin. 

“Go on,” he said, and his voice was sort of grainy and low. She loved it so much that she looked up at him with a little hitch in her breath. He noticed because he noticed everything she did when they were fucking. 

Observant boy. Beautiful boy, alien boy. 

He put his hands in his hair as she rode him, pulling it away from her face. It was always good like this, when she was on top. He never used to let her do this, always eager to have the upper hand, to have control. 

Even now his hand on her hip was dictating some of her movement, his hand in her hair pulling roughly. 

She didn’t care though, didn’t care about anything but the way his eyes were squeezed shut, his head thrown backwards, miles of pale neck on show. 

Outside the window the sun was rapidly disappearing, the sky darkening. His pupils were getting bigger in the dark and his skin looked more silvery. 

He said “fuck, yes, yes,” and she moaned back and rocked into him and stilled her hips, leaving him inside her. 

He opened his eyes and they stared at each other for the hundredth time that day. But for the first time she knew what he was thinking. She could see it in his eyes. No longer red rimmed, not tired anymore. 

He leaned up to kiss her, all teeth, rough on her bottom lip. Their tongues lashed out at each other and he pressed his hand into her hip, telling her to start moving again. 

She did, and he leaned up even more so that they could press their chests together. It was harder to ride him like this but she didn’t care. She sucked on his top lip, stealing his move, and felt his mouth open around her. 

She forced it to stay open as he came, revelling in the choked-back moan he let out through his teeth. She pulled off him, for a second unsure if they would be done now. 

But he flipped on top of her and she felt his hands against her, intent on finishing her off. It wouldn’t take long at this rate. She attached her mouth to his neck and marred his pale skin. He would have to do a glamour too. 

She sunk into the mattress as she came, feeling heavy and lightheaded at the same time. He rolled off her and she stared at his ceiling high above her, giving herself three breaths to collect her body and return it to her mind. 

She was getting better at doing that. She wanted to be ready to leave when Draco told her to. She wouldn’t look naive with him again. 

But when she swung her legs over the side of his bed and looked over at him, asking with raised eyebrows for him to conjure her clothes back, he wasn't looking at her. 

He wasn't looking at anything. His eyes were closed, face angled up at the ceiling too. His chest was slick with sweat, rising and falling in rhythmic breaths. He was hazy. She stared at him while she had the chance. 

No furrowed brow, no narrowed eyes, no forehead lines, no clenched jaw. No tension at all. He looked peaceful, as peaceful as she had ever seen him. 

When he turned to look at her it was a lazy swivel of his head. He didn’t open his eyes until they were already trained on her behind his lids. He blinked, taking her in. She could feel the cold air of the street around her shoulders already. 

He opened his mouth to tell her to leave, to tell her to hand him his wand so that he could get her clothes back. 

But he didn’t say those things at all. 

Instead, he said: “stay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed!! THANK YOU for all your comments/kudos, they motivate me so much and I love seeing what you guys think xxxx


	26. The Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys as you noticed I didn't post a chapter yesterday like normal! the reason for that was that I literally just forgot to do it. so here it is a day late!! sorry! and dw I'll still have one for you on thursday x

_DRACO_

Movie protagonists often wake up with strange women in their bed. They roll around, casually opening their eyes, when they notice that somebody else has invaded their space while they were sleeping. Their eyes widen, they gasp, they’re taken aback. They rub at their eyes in disbelief, wondering if she could be some hangover-wrought hallucination. 

Then they remember that they brought the girl home themselves, that there’s a girl in their bed because of their own rushed decisions. 

That was not the case for Draco. As soon as he regained even the slightest bit of consciousness, he knew that Iris was somewhere on his right side, just out of reach. 

He opened his eyes slowly. Draco was no stranger to rushed decisions. But he wasn't usually stupid enough to spend the night anywhere, and he certainly had never let a girl stay overnight in his bed. 

That privilege was reserved for Pansy, who hadn’t exercised it since they were still at Hogwarts. 

But that didn’t change the fact that Iris was there. 

Draco woke up slower than he normally did. He usually got out of bed as soon as his blinds went up, preferring not to laze around in bed and watch the sunlight pouring through the window. Sleep was a purely functional activity that he didn’t take any real pleasure in. 

Years ago, he used to spend a lot of time lazing about in bed. In sixth year, in seventh year, during those long breaks under his father’s thumb at the Manor, then later under the Dark Lord’s thumb. He would stare at the ceiling or out the window, practice a couple nonverbal spells - he would do anything to delay having to get up. 

Because once he got up, once his feet hit the floor and he was no longer in bed, his life would resume. And the reality of his life was incredibly bleak during those days, even darker than the new tattoo on his left forearm. So grim that Draco often looked back and wondered how he got up at all. 

Since then, he had taught himself to get up quickly. Lingering under his sheets was too reminiscent of the war. 

But today he didn’t. His eyes squinted in the sunlight and he blinked a couple of times, his mind feeling cloudier than usual. He sometimes got like this when he drank a lot, but he hadn’t had a drop the night before. 

He inhaled. Iris wasn't touching him. She was seemingly still asleep, or at least awake and making no noise. He couldn’t even hear her breathing. But he knew she was there. There was no way she would have left, not when he had given her what she wanted. 

He had been so desperate to prove to himself that Iris still cared about him yesterday. It was a bit shocking how far he had gone - his lips on her neck, hands brushing her arm, reading her notes and making careless analogies. 

She had managed to resist him for a while, but in the end it was Draco who couldn’t resist. 

He had asked her back to his, knowing she would say yes, and she did. He was leading with desire. He usually didn’t allow himself to do that, but he hadn’t slept well the night before and supposed he wasn't alert enough to force his logical brain to take over. 

He had gotten her back to his. 

He closed his eyes as images of her on top of him floated aimlessly through his head, but he felt more awake now. Every time they fucked they fit together better than the last time. They had both learned each other without meaning to and proved it every time. 

The first time he had fucked her it had been good. Above average. Otherwise he wouldn’t have done it again. But lately it had been a lot better than _above average_. She did things sometimes, knew exactly what to do, exactly what he liked, and he couldn’t recall ever telling her. They were in each other's heads while he was inside her, they had to be. 

It was enough to make him wonder whether it was possible that she was using some form of Legilimency on him, but Draco had resisted Lucius’s probing around in his mind so many times that he would’ve sensed in an instant. 

It was a bit ridiculous to think that Iris would try using magic to have better sex with him, but he honestly couldn’t understand how she did it otherwise. How she was better than other girls, better than anyone else he had ever had. 

Besides Pansy. 

He felt an odd sinking feeling in his stomach when he thought of her name. 

Bringing Iris back to his apartment was a symptom of a larger problem, which was that something seemed irreparably wrong between him and Pansy. It was like they had forgotten how to be around each other while she was gone. She had spoken to him so callously on Wednesday night that he had found himself wondering whether she really wanted him anymore, whether she cared at all about losing him. 

She did, of course she did, she had to. She just wasn't generous with her affection. But Draco had never been insecure about it before. 

Is that what this was? Insecurity?

Despite all he had been through, Draco didn’t think he had ever been truly insecure before. He had loathed himself at times, but not because he hated some aspect of his personality or face. He hated that he was being used and hated the ends he was being used for. 

He hated himself for feeling helpless. 

This was different. Pansy had always loved him, always needed him, even through the worst years of his life. Losing her seemed like an unsustainable blow. If she didn’t love him anymore, that must mean that there was something deeply wrong with him that she hadn’t noticed until now. 

Or perhaps it was a new part of him. But Draco didn’t change that much, hadn’t changed at all in the month that she was gone. 

The insecurity was foreign. It felt wrong. 

Iris was the cure. The way she looked up at him, watching him stand over her as she sat on the edge of his bed, made him feel the opposite of insecure. If someone could look at him like that he could not be terrible. There must be some part of him that deserved that look. 

And the noises she made. Fuck. 

Their skin together was a band-aid that Draco was more than happy to apply to his wounds. Fucking her had always been an outlet for something - usually frustration and anger, usually directed at her in the first place. 

He supposed it wasn't that different to fuck her as an outlet for his own insecurities. 

Hearing his name on her tongue was terrible and perfect. Like using venom to clean out a wound.

He glanced over his shoulder at her, not bothering to turn his entire body. She was asleep and he could only see half her face. She was wearing her sweater and underwear and thankfully she had known enough to not try to get close to him in the night. 

She looked warm in the morning sun. He thought, _I have an effect on her_ and repeated the phrase a couple of times, letting it swim around in his head. 

He thought of her face when he told her to stay the night. Surprise and a little bit of awe, as if he had just revealed some sort of secret potion to her. He liked seeing that look on her face and knowing that he had caused it. 

She was attached to him in some way, which meant that he was still worthy of getting attached to even if Pansy was trying to free herself from his bonds. The problem was that if Iris got attached to him, she might begin to expect the same in return. 

When she woke up and surveyed her surroundings and remembered whose bed she was in, she would probably take it as some sort of gesture of intimacy. In her head, the fact that he had let her stay the night would probably mean that he wanted her now, wanted her for something other than sex. 

In reality he just hadn’t wanted to let go of the feeling of being wanted and it would’ve been far too much work to go out and try to pick up another girl. Iris was instant gratification and she was right in front of him. 

Her spending the night meant that he could fuck her again before work and continue to keep his mind off Pansy. 

He liked that thought. Fucking her before work. Last night wasn't the only time he had thought of doing it. She would have to wear the same robes into work today, with her hair more dishleved than usual. Anyone would look at her and wonder if she never made it home last night. 

And he would look at her and know the truth. 

And Theodore fucking Nott would look at her and get that sour expression on his face. Draco grinned to himself with a fair bit of malice. He liked the knowledge that Nott was jealous, jealous of him. He was bitter that Draco got to fuck Iris whenever she wanted and she wouldn’t give it up to him. 

The sun streaming through the window began to heat him up. They didn’t have much time before they had to leave for work and thoughts of Pansy were skirting around his head, so Draco rolled over and grabbed the hem of Iris’s sweater.

Her eyes shot open. So she woke up quickly too. Or at least she did when someone’s hands were on her. 

Her gaze softened when she saw him, then hardened again a split second later. He knew she was putting it on, though. She was probably all too happy to have him on top of her. 

He tugged the sweater over her head and she squinted at him in the morning light. 

“Draco?” She asked, her voice quiet. It takes people a second to remember how to speak at a normal volume when they first wake up. 

“Iris,” he murmured his reply, shedding his own shirt and tossing it onto the floor beside the bed. 

He should do this more often. Nevermind whether or not Iris got attached to him - Draco needed this to take his mind off everything. And he wanted it too, wanted the feeling she would inevitably give to him. 

“Why are you…” she trailed off, but her voice was lucid enough that he knew she knew exactly what he was doing now. Her hands didn’t move to stop him but they didn’t exactly encourage him either - they just stayed at her side. 

“I like you better without clothes,” he murmured in reply. 

The sun streaming through the windows was burning his bare shoulders pleasantly. He felt lazy and relaxed. 

When he looked up at her face her eyes were open and wide enough that he knew she was no longer drowsy. He thought he might get to see them filled with energy, lust, even a slight bit of reverence. 

But he couldn’t really make out a single emotion in them, not at all. She was uncharacteristically blank. He curved his hand around her back, deftly taking off her bra, which she must have put back on at some point last night. 

She let him. 

He supposed that was an appropriate word. She didn’t try to stop him, that is. Her hands didn’t move to push him away. 

But they didn’t move at all. They just stayed at her sides. It was enough to make him wonder whether she could possibly have fallen asleep again, but when he looked back up at her she was staring at him. Still and blank. 

Looking at her face like that unnerved him slightly. He pulled her bra off and deposited it on the floor, narrowing his eyes at her. She was looking at him like she couldn’t see him at all, like she was blind. But if she was actually blind she would be making more of a fuss. 

He paused on top of her. He shouldn’t keep going like this.

Voldemort had _Imperiused_ enough people in Draco’s vicinity during the war that he knew exactly what it looked like. Their bodies would go sort of loose and limp. Their head would sway slightly as if their neck had given up holding it. 

Some people would take on a sort of dopey smile, like they were dreaming with their eyes open. But most people just looked completely blank - staring through everything they saw. 

They would stand there, in the Manor or in the Ministry or in a cemetery, and await Voldemort’s instructions. 

The one Draco remembered most clearly was Pius Thicknesse, who had been the Minister of Magic. He had done it in the gardens of the Manor, the same flowerbeds that Draco had played in as a child. 

To make sure the spell worked, Voldemort had commanded Thicknesse to kill one of the peacocks. He took out his wand and did it at once. 

Bellatrix laughed and Yaxley shouted something and Draco stared at the corpse of the bird on the ground, its eyes frozen in death. He had felt sick.

He felt the same sickness now. He knew Iris hadn’t been Imperiused, not by him or anyone, but he was just as on edge as he had been that day in the gardens. 

He needed to get that look off her face. Needed to do it now. She could not look at him like that, as if she was only in his bed because she wasn't in control of her own mind. It was her choice to be here, it had to be.

Part of him screamed to stop now, to get off her and let her leave. But he was afraid she wouldn’t leave - that she would just lie immobile in his bed. What would he do then? Was that even his real fear? Because the thought of her getting up and putting on her clothes, walking out of his apartment with that same blankness - that’s what scared him the most. 

And if she carried it with her at work? If he had inadvertently said something to her last night that had made her want to stop their whole arrangement?

What the fuck would he do then?

He stared at her and watched as her brow furrowed slightly. A shadow of emotion passed over her face, too fast for him to see what it was. But it was there. She was there. He could bring her back with his hands. 

He could prove to himself that whatever was wrong with her wasn't his fault, he could fix it. 

He had never seen her wake up before. He had never seen anyone but Pansy wake up before. Maybe this was just normal. Looking blank. Maybe. 

He slipped his hand underneath the band of her underwear, and the same flash of emotion decorated her eyes for a second. He pulled it off her, then leaned onto his elbows to tug his pants off. 

He checked her face again. 

She wasn't blank anymore. She was staring at him in that way she did sometimes, that way that made him feel essential. Like she revered him or something. Draco was sure it would shock the readers of the _Daily Prophet_ to know how small he had felt during the war, during those years. 

He still felt small sometimes. Rarely. 

After Wednesday night he may as well be a piece of dust. 

When Iris looked at him like that he didn’t quite know what to think. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that she didn’t understand subtlety. She was American, after all. But he was a bit alarmed by his own reaction to it. 

In the moment he thought that if she stopped looking at him like that he might lose himself. If he was worthy of that look he was good. Good enough, at least, and that’s all he could really ask for nowadays. 

He kissed her, tugged her underwear down her legs. Her lips moved against his, but more softly than usual. Her hands stayed glued to her side. 

How could she look at him like that and not jump at his touch? 

He ghosted his hand up her thigh, feeling her exhale lightly into his mouth, feeling her shake a little bit. Like she was outside in the cold air of October. But she wasn't. She was here, she was in his bed, if she could look at him like that he could make her touch him too. 

When had she ever not wanted him? Had he said something wrong?

He slipped his fingers into her, stilling his lips so that he could hear her gasp slightly. There it was. They breathed back and forth, their lips close but not touching. Exchanging air between them. 

He wanted her hand where it always was. On the back of his neck. Tangled in his hair. The other one around his shoulder, his hip, gripping at his back. Both her hands still lay on his sheets like she had forgotten how to move them. 

He could tell by her breaths that she liked it. She liked everything he did to her. He liked everything she did to him. Sexually, that is. Everything else - everything else he didn’t want to think about right now because it suddenly felt dangerously complicated. 

He heard her stifle a moan in the back of her throat and remembered hearing her make the same noise that day she had come over when he was pretending to be sick. RIght after Pansy and Blaise got back together. 

She had been trying to act like she didn’t like it. He had held his thumb in her mouth to hear the truth. 

It occurred to him that she might just be doing the same thing now. Trying to downplay how much she liked this, how much she liked his fingers, how much she probably got off on being allowed to spend the night. 

He wondered why. She hadn’t hidden a fucking thing from him at the Siren, hadn’t hidden a thing from him last night. He broke the kiss and pulled his fingers out of her, staring at her. She looked momentarily confused, then her brow flickered and her eyes returned to being blank. 

So she was trying to hide it, then. 

Maybe the shit that had happened at the Siren was the problem. She had tried to rest her head on him and he had eventually pushed her off him. Or maybe it had been the days after. He had ignored her in favor of Pansy’s return. She had been annoyed enough about that to snap at him yesterday afternoon. 

Her hands weren’t on his neck because she didn’t want him to know how badly she wanted it to be there. She didn’t want him to know that her feelings had inevitably changed from hate to something much, much different. 

Ironic, really, that her lack of action had told him the exact same thing. 

He considered passing it off. Letting her pretend. 

But he wanted to see how far she could take it. He wanted to see her lose control, wanted to ser give in to him. His thoughts about fixing her seemed absurd and he wondered why he had ever cared. He didn’t need to fix her. He just needed to fuck her. 

He did. Rocked his hips into her. Deep. Her eyes fluttered shut and he heard her breath hitch. One of her hands twitched, but they both stayed firmly by her sides. Her legs were open for him, but they were also flat on the mattress. 

He liked them better around his back. But she would. She would. 

He tightened his movements then sped up, rocking into her as hard as he dared. She whined before she could choke it back. His headboard hit the wall as he pushed into her, then again, then again. 

She wasn't bothering to disguise her noises anymore. She probably couldn’t, not when all her energy seemed to be focusing on keeping her arms still and her eyes looking away from him. 

Fuck. She liked it. She liked it, didn’t she?

He ducked into her neck as he fucked her, sucking in a mark in the most noticeable place he could think of. His lips moved against her with an obscene amount of noise as he sucked her skin through his teeth. 

She usually wouldn’t let him do that, at least not so visibly. Whatever. 

He moved downwards, thrusting into her and holding. Her hand moved again, just slightly, as if she was thinking about putting it in his hair, wrapping it around his neck. He wished she would already. He wished she would. 

He liked the feeling of her hand there. It didn’t mean anything. But he did. He liked the way her fingers tightened in his hair sometimes, like she couldn’t believe him, like she wanted to keep him close to her, like she didn't want to let go. 

He licked over her breasts in the way he knew she liked. She inhaled sharply, her back arching slightly. He pulled out slightly then pushed back in. 

Her eyes were closed. Draco wasn't sure whether she would be looking at him if they were opened. 

She liked it, what he was doing to her. He could tell by her breaths, the little twitches of her body. But her hands were still on his sheets and he hadn’t caught her eyes in a while now. 

Did her eyes matter? When did her eyes start mattering? It was her body he wanted, always her body. Just her body. Her hands were immobile but he didn’t need her hands. He could take what he wanted from her and let her figure out whatever game she was trying to play with him later. 

He was close anyway. 

He pushed into her, caught her nipple between his teeth, and she moaned loud enough for him to answer her with a little hitch of his breath. He licked over her breast again. He was close like this. 

And he didn’t see her hand move but suddenly he felt it ghost across his arm. She didn’t touch his neck, didn’t touch his shoulder or his back or his waist, but she touched him. 

That was enough. He thrust into her once more, reaching his high, then pulling out and rolling over to catch his breath. 

Her hand left his arm so quickly he wondered whether it had been there at all. 

After he caught his breath, he rolled back over, his hand moving towards her clit to finish her off so that they could go to work. 

He needed to get out of the haze of whatever this was and get into the Love Chamber, where he could at least keep a clinical amount of distance between himself and Iris. He had thought a lot of things this morning that he had no business thinking and he needed to sort himself out. 

So the quicker he finished her off, he supposed, the better. She wasn't going to wrap herself around him. She wasn't going to give him what he wanted no matter what. He would have to sort out his feelings about that, too. 

But as his hand snaked down her body, both of her hands moved for the first time. 

To push him away. 

“Don’t bother,” she said. They hadn’t spoken for a little. Her voice still had a sleepy tinge to it, but there was a hard edge. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He said back. 

“You got what you wanted,” she replied. If he didn’t know better he’d say she sounded a little bit hurt. He wasn't sure whether or not he did know better. “Don’t bother,” she repeated. 

_Don’t bother_. Fuck off. She didn’t get to act like this, like he was selfish in bed. Not when she apparently couldn’t even bring herself to link her arms around his neck anymore. 

He rolled back on top of her completely, grabbing her hands himself. If she didn’t move them, he would. He pinned them above her head, his left hand wrapping around both of her wrists. 

He slipped his fingers back into her, his thumb going to her clit. He could move just the way she liked and he did. She refused to look directly at his eyes but he still looked at hers, blazing with a strange sort of anger. 

She liked this, she wanted this, he knew that. He needed to prove it. Prove that she fucking loved this. She was desperate for it - as desperate for it as he was - fuck, no, but he wasn't desperate, he didn’t care, he could think about this later, he wouldn’t. 

_Fuck._ Stop thinking. 

She could whine at his every move but she couldn’t look at him. She had looked at him earlier, stared at him in that _way_ , that way she knew. Did something change? When had it changed? Did he say something wrong last night?

He felt her body shudder, watched her face crumble a little bit. She was close. She always looked like she was crying when she came. He used to hate it but now he liked it. Maybe that was fucking sadistic, wanting to see her like that. 

He didn’t care. 

All he could think about now was her face, turned away from him. She had to look at him. He released her wrists from his grip and used his free hand to grab her jaw, turning her face towards him. Her body shuddered again. 

She stared at him. There was something - something…

“This is what I wanted,” he growled, and her eyes squeezed shut as she came. 

He gave himself two breaths to watch her. Like she was sobbing. 

Then he rolled off her and got out of bed, pulling on his pants and casting a cleaning charm on his skin. He felt dirty, but he didn’t have enough time to shower before work, so he just summoned his robes and ran a hand through his hair. 

He looked back at Iris, wondering whether she might be giving him that look again. But she was pulling her sweater down and patting at the back of her head. 

Her hair looked messy. He hoped she didn’t fix it. 

They went into work and it was the same as it always was. He didn’t ignore her but he didn’t stand next to her. They insulted each other and Iris blushed and Draco went home and stared at himself in the mirror and picked apart every word he said. 

The possibility that he might not hate her was terrible.

October was October. Cold and windy. The sky got dark earlier. Pansy sent Draco a letter with a lipstick kiss and promised she would see him soon. He stared at it for a while. He felt something very deeply about the letter, but he wasn't sure what. 

He kept fucking Iris. She stayed over twice more. It was never weird again. She moved her hands like normal and wrapped her legs around his back and kissed him hungrily, like she really wanted to. 

But she didn’t look at him like that again. He wondered whether she ever had in the first place. Maybe he had just made the whole thing up. It was unlike him to make things up. It was unlike him to want somebody to look at him in a certain way. 

Maybe she was just tired that morning. 

In the last week of the month he overheard Iris and Theodore and the rest of them gossiping in the atrium about going clubbing on Halloween. 

Halloween was a Saturday, which was a lucky break. Draco used to hate the holiday. He found it childish, or at least his father had told him that he should find it childish. As he grew up he had grown oddly fond of it. 

Being someone else for the night was nice. 

But he wouldn’t go out on Saturday. Pansy had sent him a letter, a new one, saying she would come over to his that night. He looked at the stars through his bedroom window and hoped that things could go back to normal between them. 

Things couldn’t go back to normal. 

He tried to stop fucking Iris that week because he shouldn’t need to fuck Iris right before seeing Pansy. But on Thursday afternoon she had made a breakthrough with the mirrors they were working on and talked his ear off about it for half an hour and he had to make her shut the fuck up. He didn’t take her back to his, though. That would be wrong now. 

On Friday he left early because he was afraid it would happen again and Pansy would smell Iris on him like a bloodhound. He never, never fucked anyone the day before Pansy. 

He lay awake some nights. For some reason he didn’t really care about being in bed anymore. It didn’t put him on edge and he didn’t connect it with the war like he used to. 

October would leave soon, blow away on the winds it had created. Leaves would finish turning yellow and start falling and kids would have new chores. A lot of things would change. 

For better or for worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope this made up for its lateness x


	27. Grey Area

_IRIS_

October was over and things were no less confusing than they had been at the start. 

Iris supposed that was a slight exaggeration. Since the beginning of October, her own feelings about the situation that she and Draco were in had become frighteningly clear. She used to hate him and now… now she didn’t. 

There was a different emotion in place of the hatred now. It was not love, not anywhere close to it. But there was something. 

Most times, she thought he felt it too. 

Then he would say something or do something and she would realize that he didn’t. He couldn’t. It was all very confusing. 

It was Friday now. They had fucked yesterday afternoon so Iris thought he might deign to speak to her today, but it seemed like he wasn't planning on it. 

They were still working on the mirrors, trying to figure out how to use them to communicate - or whether they could be used that way at all. Because Draco was insisting on not getting close to her today, they were both looking at one individual mirror. 

It struck Iris as a very inefficient method, but she didn’t like to speak to him when he was acting like this - when he was ignoring her on purpose. 

There was a time where him ignoring her would’ve struck a nerve and made her melancholy. Now, she understood it as strange phases that he went through. He hated himself for not hating her. She just had to wait until his desire for her surpassed his self-loathing. Then she would have him again. 

But that theory relied on the fact that Draco didn’t hate her anymore - that he really did desire her. And some of his actions pointed to the contrary. 

Iris wondered if Draco was being confusing on purpose. It would be just like him. But deep down, she thought that his mood swings revolved less around some sort of twisted desire to hurt her and more around his own confusion about his feelings. 

He probably got off on the fact that he was still managing to string her along either way. Was he even stringing her along, though? Was there some part of her that wanted him to?

It seemed like everything he said to her was ammunition for both sides. 

_I like you better without clothes_. Those words coming out of his mouth had felt like getting punched in the stomach. 

It happened two weeks ago and she remembered it like it had happened five minutes ago. The odd sense of disbelief mixed with longing when he had told her to stay. 

His eyes were half-lidded, his shirt somewhere on the floor below him. He was below her, physically - lying on his bed as she stood over him. He never let himself be below her. The motion alone felt like some form of vulnerability, like a cat lowering its ears. 

And she had stayed. His bed smelled like him, just like him, a deep sort of musk that was synonymous with night. Moonlight spilled over his bed, painting him silver from the mirror. 

She pulled on her underwear and her sweater as she got back under his sheets. He made no move to touch her - didn’t even look at her again. He grabbed his wand and motioned the blinds on his windows to swing down, then set it down and turned over. 

His back faced her. She stared at the muscles relaxing in his shoulders. 

And when she woke up in the morning the heat of the sun was bathing her in yellow light. She breathed in the smell of him, the casual warmth of his blankets. When his hands had fallen on her waist they had been strangely cold for having been under his sheets all night. 

She was drowsy at first, letting him touch her. She woke up fully when he tugged on the hem of her shirt. And then he had said it - it. _I like you better without clothes_.

Fuck. It was like her chest had seized up or something. Maybe it was naive, but for some reason she had allowed herself to think that him letting her stay meant that something had changed between them, something real. 

But nothing had changed. He didn’t want to keep her there because he liked her presence. He kept her in his bed so he would have somebody to fuck in the morning. 

It wasn't that she didn’t want to fuck him. She could’ve stopped him easily enough if she wanted. Draco was many things, but Iris had no doubt in her mind that he wouldn’t have done anything if she had raised any real concern.

But what the fuck did she know. 

She knew she was acting strange. She couldn’t really bring herself to reciprocate the way she normally did. Wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his back seemed strangely demeaning after hearing him say that he only liked her when she was naked. 

Doing what he wanted her to do would make her feel like a robot, some sort of machine that was programmed to fulfill his desire and nothing more. 

She could tell he was pissed off about it. Confused at the very least, especially because she wasn't bothering to choke back the moans in her throat. Maybe she should’ve been. 

After he finished she felt a little bit used. He rolled off her and she was sure that he would get in the shower, pull on his robes, and tell her to leave. 

Instead, he had taken a couple of breaths then rolled back on top of her. 

Something in her was bitter. She stopped him to see if he really meant to finish her off, if he really cared enough to do it. If he was just getting her off as some sort of programmed manipulation, she would rather he just leave her as she was. But he pushed her hands away and kept going and she let him. 

And then. His hand on her jaw. His fingers inside her, his thumb on her clit, his eyes blazing into hers. Wildfire. _This is what I wanted_.

So which was it, then? 

_I like you better without clothes. This is what I wanted._

Two very different sentiments, but he said them not fifteen minutes apart. Did he only want her when she was naked? Or did he want to make her feel good? She supposed it was possible that he meant both. That he wanted her to come so she would keep crawling back to him like a sick puppy. 

She was a sick puppy. He had been ignoring her all morning and she had just told herself that he would come back around. 

Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe this was the last time. Maybe he had decided to go back to Pansy after all - maybe Iris was some sort of bargaining chip, a piece of leverage that he was using to get her back. 

She breathed in deeply, reminding herself that that didn’t make sense. He rejected Pansy last time they were together. She wouldn’t go back to him after that. Pansy simply had too much pride. 

She sighed, fingering the mirror. They were no closer to figuring them out. She was no closer to figuring him out. 

October might become November but it felt like nothing else would change. 

She glanced up towards the ingredients shelf. Sometimes seeing a particular jar of powder or liquid jogged her memory and made her think of some sort of solution to whatever problems they were supposed to be solving. 

Iris had no such luck this time. 

If anything, it was bad luck. Because yesterday afternoon Draco had pressed her up against the wall right next to the shelves and the Love Chamber very much remembered that fact. 

Her outline flashed against the wall, the palm of his hands pressing beside it. She looked away immediately, staring out the window. 

It had taken the leaves a long time to turn orange and yellow. But it took them no time at all to fall. One day they were hanging on and the next every single tree was barren. She wondered what made them all drop - if one day they just couldn’t bear hanging on anymore. 

The clock chimed the end of the day and the door was swinging shut behind Draco before she even looked up. She shook it off as she packed up. She shouldn’t let him affect her. 

She wasn't going out tonight like normal because it was Halloween tomorrow and Tracey wanted to save their big night out for a holiday. Iris thought about telling Tracey everything that was going on with Draco, but she had a sneaking suspicion that Tracey’s advice would be that he was more trouble than he was worth. 

And Iris didn’t want to hear that advice, no matter how true it was. She wasn't sure anybody could really understand his worth to her besides herself. 

Sebastian would laugh it off, turn it into some sort of grand joke. That was better than pitying advice, but it still wouldn’t help her figure out what to do. 

Talking to Theodore about Draco was completely off the table. Even bringing up Draco’s name around him seemed to set him off on a rant. She didn’t know the shit Draco had done at school still affected Theodore that much. It made her feel guilty for fucking him. 

The other week he had gone so far as to suggest that Draco had slipped something into Iris’s drink at the Siren that night three weeks ago. 

“No, I was just drunk,” Iris had replied evenly. 

Theodore had shaken his head. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, he - I don’t think he would do that.”

Theodore had looked almost pained. “Iris…” he had said, as if he was talking to a child, “I know you don’t particularly know about everything he did… but he’s perfectly capable of just about anything if it gets him something he wants.”

“I know him plenty well,” Iris had replied, her exhaustion with the conversation wearing through her voice roughly. There had been a couple of seconds of pure silence after that, then Tracey had rushed to change the subject. 

To Theodore’s ears, Iris probably sounded naive when she defended Draco. But she knew she was right. Draco would never drug her - no, he wanted to see her enjoy it and know that he had been the sole cause. He liked the fact that she let him do shit to her, shit she wouldn’t let anyone else do. 

And he liked knowing that the reason she was letting him wasn't that she was on drugs, wasn't even that she was drunk. It was just because she wanted him that badly. Just because she liked it, liked everything he did to her. 

Iris got home as the sun was setting. Earlier and earlier. Soon she would be lucky to see it at all after leaving work. She cooked herself a quick dinner, wondering whether she should call Simon and Sadie and chat with them. 

But they would ask her about Draco, and they didn’t exactly approve of that relationship either. She decided she wasn't in the mood to talk about Draco anyway. 

But apparently she was in the mood to think about him, because she lay down on her couch and did just that. Someday soon, she was going to have to get up the courage to just have it out with him. To ask him to lay out what exactly was happening between them and deal with the consequences. 

She felt like one of the yellowed leaves hanging on a branch. She wondered how much longer she could bear hanging on before she just fell. 

Tracey, Sebastian, and Theodore all seemed in good spirits when they showed up at her door on Saturday night. Nobody mentioned Draco and Theodore wasn't making any snide comments. Iris found it easy to distract herself and match their energy, which was a huge relief. 

She decided to dress up as a bunny - a classic American costume, according to Tracey. Sebastian was dressed as a superhero, which was an excuse to wear gold boxers that were charmed to cling to his skin. And nothing else. 

Theodore was dressed as Jay Gatsby, which was his excuse to wear a suit and slick his hair back. 

“Taking it back to his pureblood roots,” Tracey joked, jostling him in the side. 

“It’s a _muggle book_ ,” Theodore retorted, “I’m appreciating their culture.”

Tracey was dressed as a princess. It suited her. She was glowing in a bright pink dress and a rather large tiara that she had charmed to rain glitter around her body. It reminded Iris of the charm on the fountain in the Love Chamber that dissolved petals into sparks of light. 

They made quite the foursome as they apparated into Diagon. The crowds were out in bounds, but no amount of noise could drown out the sound of Tracey’s voice. Nobody ever got separated from Tracey - following her voice was like following a beacon of shining light. 

“I swear I’m going to do it. I’ve been eyeing her for months now,” Tracey all but shouted. 

Iris and Sebastian exchanged a fond look. Tracey had been rattling on for hours about hooking up with Millicent Bulstrode, which seemed a bit of a long shot. 

“For months?” Theodore wondered out loud. “I could have sworn you were drooling over Michael Corner not three weeks ago.”

Tracey smacked him with her bag. “I was hardly drooling!” She exclaimed in mock anger. 

They managed to make their way inside the Leaky Cauldron, and their lucky streak continued as they found a booth to squeeze into. Over foaming Halloween-themed drinks, Sebastian and Theodore started placing bets on whether or not the Tracey-Millicent hookup would actually happen. 

“I bet five Galleons that it will,” Iris said, nudging Tracey in the arm. Turning to her, she added, “you had better make it happen, Trace, yeah?”

The boys roared with laughter as Tracey promised profusely that she would do everything in her power to make sure Iris didn’t lose her money. 

She and Sebastain got up to dance and Iris and Theodore stayed at the booth to finish their drinks. Iris was having some sort of purple and green mixture - the purple part tasted sweet, the green part tasted bitter. She wasn't sure if she liked it or hated it. Theodore was drinking out of a mug filled to the brim with obsidian-black liquid. 

After a second, he got out of the opposite booth and came to sit next to her. He was back to his regular charming self - no mention of Draco. Iris liked it this way. Liked him this way. Things were easy between them like this. 

She smiled at his presence, like she was anticipating him saying something funny. It occurred to her that she might be drunker than she thought she was.

Theodore cocked his head towards the bar, raising his eyebrows and motioning for Iris to look. She leaned past him to see Sebastian, in all of his gold-underwear glory, trying to make a pass at Diana the bartender. Again.

“He’s determined,” Theodore observed, a smile playing at his lips. 

“We have to give him that,” Iris replied, smiling back. 

“Don’t forget Tracey, now,” Theodore said, motioning towards the middle of the dance floor. Tracey was easy to spot in her giant dress and sparkling tiara. She had successfully made it within five feet of Millicent Bulstrode, who seemed to be dressed up as some sort of pixie.

“Looks like I’m going to be five Galleons richer,” Iris said. 

“Don’t be too sure,” Theodore replied. “It doesn’t matter how close Tracey gets to Millicent… unless Millicent actually wants her.”

“Have a little faith in Tracey,” Iris joked, but when she looked back toward Theodore he was much more serious than she thought he would be. As if he had just said something that she was supposed to pay attention to. 

“Let’s dance,” she said, downing the rest of the mixture in her glass. She was eager to feel the warmth of the dancefloor, the easiness of her friends’ company. Their presence always erased the bitterness that Draco so often left her with. 

Theo’s hand anchored on her shoulder as they pushed through the throng, careful not to get too close to Tracey in case they ruined some highly formulated plan. She was prone to coming up with things like that at the last minute. 

It was sweaty and gross and Iris’s bunny ears kept slipping down her face or off the back of her head. She didn’t care. The music pumped through her veins, the lights pulsated ahead, moving around in their little balls. People knocked into her and Theodore’s hand grabbed her arm to try to save her from someone falling over to her right. 

They stared at each other in disbelief and laughed raucously. 

Eventually, Sebastian’s gold underwear caught Iris’s eye, and she whipped around to see that he was arm in arm with a pretty girl with mousy brown hair. She wasn't Diana, but Iris supposed Sebastian didn’t care much. They were headed towards the bathroom. Iris snorted, grabbing Theodore’s arm to get his attention and motioning for him to look. 

As he did, Iris turned towards the front of the Leaky, trying to catch sight of Tracey and see if any more progress had been made with Millicent. 

Instead, she saw Draco. 

He wasn't inside the Leaky. No, he was standing outside it, idling in the street. His posture was rigid, his shoulders full of tension. He didn’t look like he had any intention of coming into the bar - his eyes were trained to his left, down the street. 

Furrowing her brows, Iris shouted some excuse at Theodore and pushed off the dancefloor. Draco was still standing there, looking for all the world like he was waiting for someone to meet him for a duel. 

She was seized by a sudden desire to make him explain everything to her. It wasn't exactly sudden, really - she always had that desire. But now it seemed tangible, like something she should do right now. Alcohol always gave her far too much confidence. 

She strayed towards the door. Maybe he would admit that he fucking liked her, maybe he would, and then everything would be easier between them. He did _fucking like her_. He had to. 

Outside, he moved his head slightly, angling his face so that she could see more of his profile. 

So attractive she almost went still. She could freeze at the sight of him. Everything about him was her type. Besides the way he acted - but she couldn’t deny that she liked the way he acted sometimes. She just needed him to lay it out for her.

She turned back to Theodore, making sure he wasn't following her. She didn’t see him at all - he was still in the crowd, then, still dancing. Good. 

With a shake of her head, she decided that she would go outside. She would confront him. She would make him explain. 

But when she turned back to him, there was someone else standing with him. 

Oh. Fuck.

Pansy. 

They were no longer right outside the Leaky - they had moved to the side of the building where way less people could see them - but if Iris turned just right she could see them perfectly through one of the windows. 

For a second, it looked almost like they were kissing. Then Pansy moved her head, and Iris realized that her depth perception must be off. Their faces weren’t touching. They were arguing. Pansy’s hands moved through the air wildly, threatening to mess up her perfectly placed hair. Draco looked stony. When he spoke, his mouth barely opened, but Iris could still picture his tone perfectly. 

The type of quiet voice that is somehow twenty times angrier than yelling. 

Draco looked up at the sky in disbelief, running his hands through his hair. When he looked back down, he said something to her. Iris couldn’t read his lips but thought by the way his eyes narrowed as he spoke that it must have been cruel. 

Instead of saying something back, Pansy turned and left. 

Draco stared after her for a couple of seconds, tense and angry. Iris wondered whether he might run after her. But he didn’t. 

Instead, he turned to the wall of the Leaky, his face a cross between deep anger and deep sadness. He looked sort of crumpled. 

He cocked his fist slightly, then slammed it into the brick so forcefully Iris was surprised that she couldn’t hear it through the wall, over the music and conversations. She blinked hard. 

The anger gone from his face, he leaned into his fist and rested his head against the wall. Iris watched him with her jaw dropped. 

He must have been lying, then. About Pansy. Otherwise, what the fuck were they just arguing about? What could she have said that would make him angry enough to punch a wall? 

He lit up a cigarette with the tip of his wand and took a drag. She swore she could see blood on his knuckles through the dirty window and across the bar and felt a pang in her chest that she quickly dismissed as a symptom of being drunk. 

She couldn’t tell whether her heart was beating faster or slower than normal, but she could hear it either way. He looked so disappointed that Pansy left. Iris was sure when she left him he looked something more like relief. 

“Iris!” 

Theodore’s voice cut her conscious. She turned to see him emerging from the crowd, a grin on his face and the button-down under his suit completely unbuttoned. She wasn't sure if his hair was slick from Sleekeazy’s or from sweat. He didn’t seem to register her bewilderment - he just strolled up to her and motioned frantically into the crowd.

Iris followed his hands. It wasn't easy to see where he was pointing - Tracey’s tiara would stand out in any environment. And she was hooking up with none other than Millicent Bulstrode. 

She looked back at Theodore, managing to grin at how far his jaw was dropped from his face. 

“Five Galleons richer, you,” he said quietly into her ear. She smiled at him again. 

Then stole a look outside. Draco was gone. She blinked, angry at him for ruining her mood. He hadn’t done it on purpose, though. It wasn't his fault at all. It was her fault, all her fault, for allowing herself to get attached to him, to believe that he might be telling her the truth. 

Maybe Theodore was right. Maybe she was naive. 

“You alright?” He asked.

She nodded. “Yeah, just drunk.”

“That purple thing got to you, huh?” He asked, and Iris nodded, grateful for the excuse. 

She didn’t want to talk anymore so she led Theodore back to the dancefloor and attempted to get all the negative thoughts out of her system as the lights flashed and the bass boomed. But it seemed like the alcohol was wearing off. 

And her hope that anything would change with Draco was wearing off just as quickly. 

She got home late, five sticky Galleons in her pocket that the boys had forked over before she left. She didn’t want to know where Sebastian had pulled his two out of. 

As she lay in bed, anger slowly crept into her melancholy. It wasn't just her own juvenile optimism that was making her feel so let down - it was the fact that he had lied to her. 

_Maybe I don’t want Pansy anymore. Maybe I just want you._

What the fuck had she been supposed to think about that? 

She was just as angry when she woke up. She had been so sure that he felt something for her. She still was, sort of - all of the things he had said and done to her in the past month certainly didn’t lend themselves to hatred. 

But she never felt like she knew the whole story with him. There was always something missing, something he never bothered to reveal to her. And until she understood it - the thing with Pansy, and whatever else there was to know - she would never understand him. 

She couldn’t go into another Monday morning in the Love Chamber without knowing what she was getting into. She couldn’t.

Yeah. Fuck it. She would go to his apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU for your comments & kudos !!
> 
> I love reading your theories :)


	28. Knuckles

_DRACO_

_Saturday_

Draco sat in his living room letting the sun pour in. It was Halloween today. The entire nation was probably out putting on costumes. Iris and her friends were going out. 

But he was staying in. Pansy had sent him a letter saying that she would come over tonight. He wanted to fix things with her more than he wanted most anything in his life. He wanted to fuck her. It had been so long without her. 

He fingered the letter she had sent him, the letter that just said _Saturday night_. He felt relaxed. He had a strange sense that everything would work out, that he and Pansy would fit back together the way they always did, that everything that had happened between them on that weird Wednesday night would fade from his mind. 

Night rolled around and he stood in front of his windows, a glass of wine in his hand. He set the bottle on the table, another empty glass beside it. 

She was late, but Draco supposed it wasn't as easy for her to get out of the house now that she had Blaise with her. He felt a little stab of jealousy. He shouldn’t have fucked Iris on Thursday. That was too close, too fresh in his memory. 

He had managed to hold off on her yesterday by completely ignoring her. He wondered if she was angry at him, if she was sad that he hadn’t spoken to her. It would be nice if she was. A nice feeling. He blinked hard. It would be nice to have the power over her, that was all. It would be nice to know his movements affected her. 

It didn’t go beyond that.

Pansy was definitely late now. The assurance Draco had felt in his stomach was quickly turning to something more like apprehension. The glass of wine he had been sipping on for the past hour began to burn a steady hole in his abdomen, a strange tightening feeling that spread to his chest. He put his glass down. 

He willed the silence in his apartment to be broken by the metallic click of his door handles, the swishing sound as his wards bent to let Pansy in. He longed to hear the sound of her heels on the floor. He wouldn’t even turn around until her footsteps were close to him. 

But instead the silence was broken by a steady tapping on the window in his bedroom. Wary, he walked down the hallway and peered into his room. It was late for post, and he had already gotten the paper that morning. 

But it wasn't an owl bringing the _Daily Prophet_. No. 

It was Pansy’s owl. 

Draco’s stomach seized even more. He opened the window and the bird fluttered in. He knew what the letter would say, knew before he even touched it. He felt sick seeing her owl perch on his dresser and wanted to push it back out of his window. 

But it was Pansy’s fault, not her bird’s. 

_Draco,_

_My apologies, but we’ll have to reschedule. Blaise has surprised me with a dinner in Diagon Alley for Halloween. I’ll be in touch._

_Sincerely,  
Pansy Parkinson_.

She wrote as if Blaise was looking over her shoulder. Maybe he had been. Pansy was always careful in her letters. She always made sure that they looked innocuous enough that if somebody got ahold of them, they wouldn’t be able to tell that there was anything going on between her and Draco. 

The only exception in the past five years had been the letter she sent him before going to Paris, her proclamation that she was _always his_. If she was still his she certainly hadn’t been acting like it. She hadn’t even bothered to tell him that she was leaving London for a month and a half in person. 

Draco opened the window and sent her owl away with no response. 

He walked back into the living room, the dread in his stomach hardening into hot anger. Maybe Pansy hadn’t wanted to go to dinner - she probably had to do it to save face. She probably wished she was here with Draco. 

But those thoughts didn’t comfort him the way they normally did. If she wished she was here with Draco, really wished it, she would be. If she wanted him the way she said she did, if they belonged to each other like two pitiful objects, she would be here with him. 

He had half a mind to smash the wine glass he had left out for her, but he didn’t want to have to clean it up. He poured himself a generous portion from the bottle, no longer caring whether or not he was sober tonight. 

He stared out his windows. Saturday night crowds didn’t usually reach his apartment at the North End of Diagon, but there were more people than usual milling about in the streets tonight. Halloween. 

Pansy was below him somewhere. Out at a restaurant with Blaise. Probably the new one that had just gone in a couple of weeks ago. He had heard people in the atrium at work complaining about how high its prices were. Blaise probably only ever gave her the best. 

She wouldn’t be in costume and neither would she. Neither of them would stoop so low.

The knowledge of where she was - where he thought she must be - churned in his stomach with the wine and a shot of black Firewhiskey that he had thrown down for good measure. 

He was too drunk to apparate. He did it anyway. 

The mood was even more jovial on the ground. Shouts and laughter and snippets of songs erupted through every corner of the air around him. People ducked into clubs and restaurants and alleys. Everyone he saw seemed to be in costume - transfigured hair, teeth, even facial features. 

He glanced down at his own attire. Perfectly tailored. He supposed he could be posing as a muggle boss if anyone asked. 

But he wasn't in Diagon to get more drunk and costume watch. He was in Diagon to find Pansy and let her have a piece of his mind. She was taking advantage of him. Draco was used to making other people feel that way, but he had never felt it himself and never wanted to again. 

It was a couple of blocks to the restaurant he thought they would be at. His apparation hadn’t been as accurate as he thought it would be. There were less drunk people milling around here. It was too nice, too high-end for them. 

Draco pushed open the door to the restaurant, his eyes blazing down the row of minimalist glass tables that seemed to glow a different color based on what course of the meal its inhabitants were on. 

“Do you have a reservation, sir?” A voice asked from beside Draco. 

He didn’t turn to see who it belonged to. His eyes were scanning every inch of the room. 

“I’m looking for a Pansy Parkinson,” he said evenly, still not turning towards the source of the voice. He didn’t need to, though, because all at once he saw her. 

She was looking the picture of glamor in a deep red dress. Her hair was pin-straight at her sides, her milky shoulders set in perfect posture. She put down a glass of red wine. Draco wondered if it was the same type that he would’ve served her if she had followed through on her promise to come to his. 

He could ask. He could make her explain. 

“Sire, if you don’t have a reservation -” the man beside Draco started, but Draco held up his hand and effectively cut him off. 

He and Pansy were staring at each other now. He raised his eyebrows, jerking his head backwards in a concise motion. 

“Sir -” the man started again, and Draco turned to take him in for the first time. He was short and had a long beard. 

“Yeah,” Draco said, knowing that Pansy had gotten the message. “I’m leaving.”

He pushed out of the doors and walked down the street. Pansy wouldn’t speak to him unless they were a good distance away. They were close to the Leaky, which he supposed would be as good of a place as any. There was a big enough crowd that they wouldn’t stand out, and a couple of alleys they could easily duck into. 

He stood in the street and stared up towards the building Pansy was eating in. She would be angry. Fine. He was angry, too. It had been a while since they had had a good fight. It had been a while since they had had a good anything. 

She took long enough that he was beginning to consider the possibility that she wouldn’t come at all. That would be an ego death so big he wasn't sure if he could bear it. If she didn’t come speak to him he would never speak to her again. 

But she knew that. And she wasn't willing to risk it. 

So she came out. She moved quickly, her head down, willing people walking by her not to notice her. They were caught up in their own Halloween revelry, though - or they just didn’t care. 

She didn’t look at Draco until she was mere feet away from him and he could clearly see the look in her eyes. Pure rage. Fire rivaling even that of Iris. Not bothering to say a word, he walked towards one of the alleys. 

They ducked in. 

“Do you have any idea,” Pansy growled as soon as they were out of sight from the street. “How fucking hard it was to convince Blaise that I needed to leave the fucking restaurant without him?”

“Oh, fuck, you’re right,” Draco replied, his tone dripping in sarcasm, “sorry. Wouldn’t want to hurt Blaise’s feelings, would I? Wouldn’t want to make him suspicious.”

“No,” Pansy shot back icily, “you wouldn’t. Don’t you dare threaten me.”

“I’m not threatening anyone.”

“Yes, you are. You know you are. You came into that restaurant - where _anyone_ could see you. And now you’re talking about Blaise being suspicious of us. You know if you tell anyone I’ll fucking kill you. I’ll never speak to you again. And I’ll go to my fucking grave denying anything happened between us.”

Draco’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t exactly been expecting her to be on her knees groveling, but he hadn’t expected such mirth, either. 

“You know I wouldn’t tell anyone. How fucking stupid do you think I am?”

“Right now? After you all but walked right up to me in public? The only reason I came to speak to you is because I’m afraid that you’d do something even more reckless if I didn’t.”

“And here I was thinking it was because you didn’t want to lose me,” Draco spat back at her, every word dripping with malice despite the vulnerability they carried. “Silly me, yeah?”

“I never want to lose you,” Pansy said, her tone equally vicious. “But if you keep acting like this I will. I’ll fucking lose you and I won’t think twice about it.”

“Blaise over me now, is it.”

“No. It’s _me_ over you and it always will be. It’ll be me over everyone for the rest of my life. The same way it is for you.”

They had always been selfish. That much was true. But this felt different. 

“The nerve of you,” Draco leveled, “telling me you belong to me when you’re off fucking him. When I haven’t properly seen you in two months. Fuck off.”

“As if you’ve been celibate while I was away?” Pansy demanded. “Of course I’m yours. And you’re mine. But nobody will ever know that besides the two of us. That’s the way it always will be. So swallow your fucking pride and accept that.” 

Silence hung between them for a second. Draco looked up at the sky. The sky was black above him. There must be clouds blocking the stars. 

“If you can’t, I can live without you,” Pansy said from below him. 

He looked back down, every inch of him dripping with pure anger. 

“I can live without you, too. Don’t act like I can’t,” he growled. “I could walk into the Leaky and fuck somebody right now. Maybe I will. Maybe they’ll be better than you ever were.”

He didn’t mean it and she probably knew it. He was just being cruel on purpose, lashing out at her so that she would betray some sort of emotion to him. And then he would know that she cared. But instead of bowing her head, inside of her eyes welling up with tears, she just stared at him with naked cruelty. 

Then turned and left. 

His fucking knuckles hurt after he slammed them into the brick. He should’ve seen it coming. Rough clay, hard surface. They were oozing blood. He stared at them as he lit up a cigarette with his other hand. 

There were already bruises, the purple and yellow ugly kinds. He was too drunk to try to heal them. He didn’t want to be outside anymore and suddenly hated the cold. 

So he apparated home. It was probably a small miracle that he didn’t splinch. He lay down in bed and finished his cigarette. Smoke dissipated through the air around him. He didn’t roll his window up. He shivered. 

He couldn’t remember the last time Pansy was angry at him like this. Angry enough to leave without a word to him. 

But he would rather her be angry than indifferent. He would rather get a reaction out of her, any reaction, than the silence he had endured for months. How fucking childish. He didn’t give a fuck. 

_Sunday Morning_

His blinds went up like normal, but the thing that woke him up was the post owl tapping at his window. He grabbed at the paper. The bird squawked in protest. He still felt drunk, or at least felt angry and exhausted. 

He hadn’t had the best sleep of his life last night. 

The front page was some article about Ministry politics. He should give a fuck about it but it didn’t. Reading too much about politics made him feel like his father. He flipped to the gossip column, perhaps because he wanted to hurt himself. 

There they were. Pansy in her long red dress, Blaise in a classic tuxedo. Leaving the restaurant together. They weren’t staring at the cameras - they were staring right at each other. Looking deliriously happy. 

Draco grabbed his wand from his bedside table and set it on fucking fire. He levitated it next to him and watched it burn, then grabbed a new cigarette and cast another charm to light it. 

He wrapped his hand around his wand hard enough to open up one of the cuts on his knuckle. He surveyed them. 

The bruising was somehow worse than he remembered. The cuts were like uneven circles on each knuckle. The one that had broken open was dripping a steady stream of blood. 

Draco wandered into his kitchen. There was an empty bottle of black Firewhiskey on the kitchen counter. He didn’t remember drinking after he got home last night, but apparently he had. He was shirtless but still wearing the black slacks he had been in the night before. He took a long drag and felt like his body was weakening. 

He liked the feeling of slowly destroying his body. Like he would have to take shallow breaths for the next fifty years. It had never been fit to live in anyway, not since his forearm had been marked.

He tried to recall any healing spells that would work on cuts and bruises, but Hogwarts taught healing charms in sixth year and Draco had spent most of sixth year in the Room of Requirement or awake in his bed. 

He tried a couple of things, his voice gravelly in the early morning. His voice always sounded like that when he was tired - but he had slept enough last night that it was strange. Maybe he was just tired in general. Fucking exhausted. 

And frustrated too. He should be able to remember a basic healing charm, at least one. Surely he had attended _some_ classes his sixth year. Or maybe he was just spending every minute of his time fucking Pansy into the mattress or figuring out to kill his headmaster under threat of death. 

He had been anticipating fucking Pansy all night last night. All week. He hadn’t so much as looked Iris’s way on Friday because of it. And all she had given him was an argument. Fuck. Yeah, he really was fucking frustrated. 

He could feel the beginnings of a hangover licking at his temples and the edges of his stomach, and he was not going to let that happen. 

He swung his injured hand down to his side, giving up on stopping the beads of blood dripping down from his knuckle. Instead, he flicked his wand to whip the door of his liquor cabinet open.

He took another drag of his cigarette as he surveyed the room, staring at the bottles and feeling them stare back at him. He had apparently finished off his hardest shit last night. 

Just as he was about to summon a bottle of Dragon Brandy to his side, though, someone knocked at his door. 

His first thought, as always, was Pansy. Perhaps she had come to apologize, to right things between them. 

He pictured himself swinging the door open, pictured her looking perfect behind it. She would stare in and see him shirtless, blood dripping steadily from the open wound on his knuckles, cigarette smoke clouding the air in front of him. 

_Look what you do to me,_ he would growl at her. _This is what you do to me._

But Pansy didn’t need to knock. His wards would let her in. So he supposed he knew on some level that it wasn't Pansy behind the door when he pointed his wand lazily at the handle and wordlessly opened it. 

He knew it would be Iris. And, for some reason, the thought wasn't a let-down. 

The door swung open. Iris’s hair was in a ponytail. It was early, early enough that he thought coming to see him must have been the first thing she had done after waking up. 

He watched her as she wordlessly took in his surroundings. Her eyes raked over his dirty counters, the empty bottle of firewhiskey, his shirt from last night crumpled on the floor of the living room. 

He was a specimen of disaster. Barefoot, bare chest. Slacks from last night hanging on his hips as perfectly as they could without a belt. A cigarette poised between his lips, tiny puffs of smoke curling up from its tip. 

Her gaze lingered on his knuckles, which were decorated in purple and yellow bruises and bright red blood. So red it looked almost fake, like the shit everyone conjured for Halloween second year. 

Then she met his eyes. She looked resolute, like she had made up her mind about something and nothing he could do would change it. 

He wanted to know what she was thinking. 

“What are you doing here?” He asked. His voice wasn't cruel or kind. It was neutral. That probably pissed Iris off. 

“Come to talk,” she replied evenly. Her brows furrowed, eyes flicking down to his hand then back up to his face. “Are you alright?”

She sounded almost gentle when she said it. Like she wanted to know, needed to know that he wasn't hurt. He wondered how he could pass it off to her, how he could explain the bruises without bringing up Pansy. 

Saying Pansy’s name might put Iris off him, and he couldn’t have that happen now. Here was his way to get rid of all his latent frustration. A way to get rid of everything, to feel relaxed and sated and comfortable. Right in front of him - his for the taking. 

If he played it right. 

He shrugged. He couldn’t be too eager or too nonchalant. 

She bit her lip absentmindedly in that way she seemed to do whenever she was thinking hard. Staring at his knuckles again. She would ask him to explain, he was sure, and he focused all his attention on coming up with a believable excuse.

She raised her eyebrows. “I expect that’s from the wall.”

His eyes narrowed of their own accord, all his excuses dashed at once. 

“How the fuck do you know that?” He asked. His tone wasn't angry, though he supposed it should be. 

“I was at the Leaky,” Iris replied simply. “Let me fix it.”

It took him a second to formulate a response to her words. She had seen him driving his fist into a brick wall, then. He didn’t care about that. The most pressing concern now was what she had seen beforehand. Had she been watching as he and Pansy argued? Is that why she was here now - to get angry with him, to accuse him of lying?

He supposed she had the right. But she didn’t look angry. She had just asked him whether she could fix it. 

“No,” he said. 

“Why not? You clearly can’t, otherwise you would have done it already.”

There was no arguing with that, but Draco still didn’t want her anywhere near his hand injury. He took another drag of his cigarette, breathing fire back into his throat. If she fixed his hand - if he _let her_ fix his hand - that would be something like vulnerability. 

Draco didn’t like accepting help. If you let people fix your problems for long enough, you won’t be able to fix them by yourself. 

Iris didn’t seem to care about the fact that he wasn't answering her. She probably knew his body language enough to infer that it would’ve been something flippant and slightly rude. 

She took a couple of steps closer to him, wandering past the line that divided his kitchen and his living room. They were in the same space now. She looked around again, her eyes lingering on the crumpled shirt he had been wearing last night. 

When her eyes came back to him they rested on his hand instead of his face. She was incredibly preoccupied with the bruises on his knuckles. 

He felt very conflicting emotions about it. Annoyance - she wouldn’t look at his face. A slight edge of fear - what exactly had she seen between him and Pansy?

But there was something else there, too. A sort of consolation. Iris didn’t want him to be hurt. She probably saw him and Pansy and knew he had lied to her about moving on. She was probably confused and slightly angry that he had ignored her all day on Friday. But she still wanted to fix his fucking knuckles.

“You were watching me at the Leaky?” He said quietly, baiting her gaze to rise to his eye level. He liked when she was close to him because she had to look up further to meet his eyes. She had taken a couple more steps towards him. 

“Yeah, watching you act like a fucking idiot.” In another context the line could’ve been humorous or angry. But it came out of her mouth sad. “You never learnt how to heal a bruise at Hogwarts?”

He hadn’t. She took another step to him. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and held it at his side. 

Iris wouldn’t make another move. If he wanted her he could have her now, but he had to take her. The first time they kissed she had been the one to lean in, but she never did it again. He wondered if somewhere along the line he had robbed her of the confidence to step in first. 

He had a way of doing that. Making people worse. 

He dropped the cigarette onto the floor. A tiny wisp of smoke curled up from it. Iris watched it fall and stared at it on the ground for a second. She knew what he meant by it. He needed his hands free. 

She usually knew what he meant. About her, about anything. 

She stepped forward again - he was wrong, she’d take one last step. Her shoe pressed onto the cigarette, putting it out. 

As soon as she looked back up at him he wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and dragged her into him. Bending his fingers hurt. He was probably getting blood in her hair. 

She leaned up into him, her nose brushing against his the way it always did.

Gentle at first. But never for long. 

He broke apart from her and turned to walk down the hallway without another word. He could fuck her on the couch but it was better in his bed. She looked better there, when everything around her had his distinct stamp on it. A four-poster holding up an empty frame. Silk pillowcases and black blankets. 

His things had been dark green once. But that was the color of his bed during the war. Black was easier. 

He could hear her footsteps on the wood behind him. When they were like this he thought she might follow him anywhere. Everywhere. When they were like this he really felt like he had her, like she was tied to him. 

Tied to his body, at least. 

She was repulsed by his mind.

She hovered in his doorway and he knew that she had left something unsaid. She had come to his apartment to tell him something and he had known it since the first second he saw her face. 

Perhaps she couldn’t get up the nerve. Or maybe he had successfully distracted her with his bruises and his cigarette and his empty voice. 

He could make it worth it. He could fuck her hard enough that she would forget whatever it was she meant to tell him. He had a feeling it was something that he wouldn’t want to hear, anyway, so it would probably be better to forget. 

“Come here,” he said, standing against the foot of his bed. It was not a comfortable phrase. It was a command - an order. 

She obeyed. Shyer than usual today. Sometimes she was so confident, so fiery, and other times she acted like she couldn’t believe the ground was allowing her to walk on it. She was the personification of contradiction, of changing moods. 

She was just sensitive, he supposed. When nothing was bothering her she felt limitless. But when something challenged her mindset she began to question every assertion she had ever made. He wondered what had set her off now, why she was shy. 

Probably the thing she had come to talk to him about. Probably seeing him and Pansy. 

She reached him and glanced down at her shoes, shrugging them off with her heels. She was shorter now. He liked that. He cupped her jaw and pulled her gaze up from his chest. Her eyes blinked shut carefully. 

He kept his open a second longer just to see her wanting him. 

His hand tangled in her hair at the back of her neck. The same thing she was always doing to him. He could feel a piece of it matted from the blood on his hands. He wondered if he could do anything now.

The way she exhaled into his mouth made him think that maybe he could. 

The frustration that had been building up in his body since Friday turned into a sort of aching in his stomach, a pull towards Iris that he didn’t care about resisting. He probably wouldn’t have cared about resisting her for some time now if it hadn’t been for Pansy. 

A lot of things were different because of Pansy. 

But he didn’t want to think about her now. 

He could easily picture the feeling of his thumb slipping below Iris’s waistband but that would take too long and he was suddenly impatient. He grabbed for his wand and wordlessly banished their clothes. 

She inhaled slightly, her eyes opening. She looked up at him and faltered when she caught his gaze, as if something about his face caught her off guard. 

He used to fuck her and tell himself he was thinking about Pansy. That was never the truth, though, and for the first time he felt the knowledge of it rest under his skin. Iris had always been Iris to him, regardless of whether she had been the object of his desire or the object of his annoyance.

The problem had arisen when his annoyance and desire had become almost inseparable. 

But it wasn't a problem, not really. They were on his bed now, her body pale against the darkness of his blankets. He remembered two weeks ago when he had fucked her in this bed and she hadn’t moved a muscle and felt an odd tightness in his chest thinking about it. 

Then she leaned up into him, her arm moving to wrap around his back, and he let it go. She proved that she wanted him without him asking her to. She probably didn’t even think about it like that. It was in her nature. 

Every time she touched him, even now, he felt an odd sense of relief. He hadn’t fucked up entirely. Or, if he had, she was still willing to come back.

That used to be a source of power, a way to feel in control. Now it was something else entirely. He could make her cry and hurt. He could make her eyes narrow in deep rage. He could make her confused, make her feel inferior. 

But he just wanted to make her feel good. 

He fucked her hard enough that he could hear the headboard slam against the wall. But it felt different than normal. 

He noticed at some point that their bodies were close together. Closer than they usually were. If she inhaled sharply enough he could feel the bottoms of her ribs hard against his skin. He didn’t realize it was his arm holding them together until a second after that. 

He had it wrapped around her back, tight and unyielding. Pulling her into him.

He didn’t tell her to leave afterwards but he knew she wouldn’t stay. Something in her body seemed distant now that they had finished. She was slowly disappearing into her own mind now, dwelling on what she had left unsaid. 

When he turned towards her she was already staring at him. He felt like something had hit his chest, like a hammer. Like a knife. She was giving him that look, the one he thought he might’ve made up. 

He still didn’t know how to classify it. 

Reverence, desperation, melancholy. Like resignation and hope at once. 

He heard the sheets moving slightly and felt her hand grab at his. For a second, he thought she was trying to hold it. He wasn't sure what to do with that. 

But instead she pulled it over top of the blankets and stared at his bruises for a second. 

She grabbed her wand. Draco would’ve pulled away reflexively, but his body was lazy and tired. She murmured something he didn’t quite catch. 

But it made his bruises shrink and lessen in intensity, made his cuts turn to scabs and then to tiny scars you could barely make out. His knuckles just looked red now. 

She dropped his hand and by the time he looked up at her, she was moving away from him. Out of his bed, grabbing her clothes from the floor. He had absentmindedly conjured them back a couple of minutes ago and now found himself wishing that he hadn’t. 

Iris didn’t speak to him again, didn’t even look his way. As she walked through the doorway of his room, he wondered whether he might call after her to stay. But he didn’t open his mouth to do it. 

He was thinking about that look. What it meant. 

He heard the sound of his door opening and shutting. She was gone, then, really gone. 

Draco dragged himself out of bed after a while and wandered over to the window. He flexed his newly-healed hand. Even the red spots were growing lighter. 

He could feel her magic there, between his bones, under his skin. The feeling would fade away after a couple of hours. 

Pansy was the only other person in the world whose magic he had felt. They were very different, Iris and Pansy. Pansy’s magic was subtle but cutthroat, a powerful sort of edge to it. Iris’s was obvious, headstrong with pliant edges. Strong and gentle at the same time. 

He ached to see Pansy again, to figure things out, to make sure that it wasn't broken between them. 

But what he was thinking about now was the thing Iris had meant to say.


End file.
